OGUNQUIT — You’ve seen her on primetime and late-night television, in movies and on the news. Well, get ready to laugh, because renowned comedian Paula Poundstone will be making a stop in Ogunquit at the end of the month. 

Poundstone, who as being doing comedy for 37 years, will share the dining room with patrons at Jonathan’s Ogunquit on Saturday, Nov. 26, for a cozy night of laughter and good cheer.

Poundstone’s career can be traced back to 1979, when she gave up her job as a busser in a restaurant and joined the burgeoning Boston comedy scene. She said she had always wanted to be a comic, thinking she’d work for a sketch comedy show like “Saturday Night Live.”

Stand-up, she said, emerged as the alternative.

“It really was sort of serendipitous where I lived in a town, Boston, which was one of the cities across the country where a renewed stand up comedy scene at all developed,” she said.

Within a couple years, her career took off.

In 1992, Poundstone became the first woman to host the prestigious White House Correspondents Dinner, and only four women have done so since. Also in 1992, she hosted her HBO comedy special, “Cats, Cops and Stuff,” which won a CableACE Award for Best Standup Comedy Special. She was also the first woman to receive that award.

But awards aside, Poundstone said her affinity for the funny just comes naturally.

For material, she draws from everyday occurrences that are mostly autobiographical. She said she is always aware of her surroundings and, keeps track of her experiences for use in the future.

“I go through life a little bit like a pool skimmer: I always have my eye out, or some consciousness anywhere or any way of thinking of something that I can retell,” Poundstone said. “For the most part, things come very sort of naturally of the moment, and always did. The difference is now I either write them down or make a note of them.”

But she doesn’t try too hard to be funny, she said, because that would result in jokes that aren’t exactly laugh-out-loud. Instead, she relies on experience in conjunction with natural talent.

“The harder I try the less I get,” Poundstone said. “I think it’s just sort of living and making note of things. We’re lucky the species that we’ve been given a sense of humor, a healing coping mechanism.”

Poundstone said a good one-third of her show is improvised, and relies on audience participation for material. She said interacting with the crowd is her favorite part of any comedy routine.

“My favorite part of anything is just talking to the audience,” she said. “It’s really the audience in these places that makes it unique to that particular night.”

Poundstone said she has the greatest job in the world because she gets to bring people together. Since the 2008 financial recession, she said, she feels most people have been “emotionally on the run,” and in need of two things: to be in a group, and to laugh.

“I do feel it’s important for people to be out responding to things as a group,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time when someone types ‘LOL,’ it’s not true. Most of us don’t laugh out loud when we’re by ourselves or staring at a small (phone) screen, whereas when you’re in a group, you get caught up in infectious laughter.” 

Poundstone says she performs about 90 shows each year, in between taking care of her 14 — yes, 14 — cats and promoting her latest album, “North by Northwest,” which came out at the end of June and debuted at number one Amazon.

“I do that for a couple reasons: one is debt, great personal debt. Another reason I do it is I love the TSA,” she joked. “But really, I have the greatest job in the world.”

Poundstone said she’s excited to return to Jonathan’s Ogunquit, where she’s played a number of shows in the past. She loves Ogunquit — and all of Maine, she said — for its natural beauty, but above all the intimate setting the restaurant offers.

“Me and the crowd practically sit in the same chair; it doesn’t get more intimate than that,” she said. “It kinda feels a pajama party — the parents aren’t there and we can just talk about anything.”

Paula Poundstone will perform at Jonathan’s Ogunquit, 92 Bourne Lane, Ogunquit, on Saturday, Nov. 26. The show begins at 8 p.m. For more information or to buy tickets, visit tickets.jonathansogunquit.com/.

— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].