David Sedaris

David Sedaris (born December 26, 1956) is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor.

Sedaris was first publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next five subsequent essay collections, Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008), have become New York Times Best Sellers. In 2010, he released another collection of stories .

, his books have collectively sold seven million copies. Much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, homosexuality, and his life in France, and most recently in London and the South Downs, with his partner, Hugh Hamrick.

Early life and "SantaLand Diaries"

Sedaris was raised in a suburban section of Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the second child of six born to Sharon and Lou, an IBM engineer. His siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lisa, Gretchen, Amy, Tiffany, and Paul (The Rooster). In his teens and twenties, he dabbled in visual and performance art. His lack of success is described in several of his essays. After graduating from Jesse O. Sanderson High School in Raleigh, Sedaris briefly attended Western Carolina University before transferring to and dropping out of Kent State University in 1977. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1983, graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. (He did not attend Princeton University, although he spoke fondly of doing so in "What I Learned", a comic baccalaureate address delivered at Princeton in June 2006.)

While working a string of odd jobs across Raleigh, Chicago and New York City, Sedaris was discovered reading his diary (which he has kept since 1977) in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass, who asked Sedaris to appear on his weekly local program The Wild Room. Sedaris later said, "I owe everything to Ira ... My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand." Sedaris's success on The Wild Room led to his National Public Radio debut on December 23, 1992, when he read a radio essay on Morning Edition titled "SantaLand Diaries", which described his experiences working as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas time in New York.

"SantaLand Diaries" was an immediate success with radio listeners, and made Sedaris what The New York Times called "a minor phenomenon". For that book, Sedaris won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor, and was named "Humorist of the Year" by Time magazine.

In April 2001, Variety reported that Sedaris had sold the Me Talk Pretty One Day film rights to director Wayne Wang, who was adapting four stories from the book for Columbia Pictures with hopes of beginning shooting in late 2001. Wang had completed the script and begun casting when Sedaris asked to "g[e]t out of it", after a conversation with his sister aroused concerns as to how his family might be portrayed on screen. (He wrote about the conversation and its aftermath in the essay "Repeat After Me".) Sedaris recounted that Wang was "a real prince ... I didn't want him to be mad at me, but he was so grown up about it. I never saw how it could be turned into a movie anyway."

In 2004, Sedaris published Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which hit #1 on The New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller list on June 20, 2004. that year, Sedaris included several animal fables in his US book tour, and three of his fables were broadcast on This American Life.

Several published responses to Heard's article argued that Sedaris's readers are aware that his descriptions and stories are intentionally exaggerated and manipulated to maximize comic effect.

In September 2007, a new Sedaris collection was announced for publication on June 3, 2008. The collection's working title was All the Beauty You Will Ever Need, but Sedaris later retitled it Indefinite Leave to Remain and finally settled on the title When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Although at least one news source assumed that the book would consist entirely of fables,

In December 2008, David Sedaris received an honorary doctorate from Binghamton University.

In June 2008 Sedaris talked at the University of Arizona bookstore..

In April 2010, BBC Radio 4 aired Meet David Sedaris, a four-part series of essays Sedaris read before a live audience.

Sedaris revealed in a book signing/reading at the Chicago auditorium that his next book would be out in October 2010 (April 17, 2010). At the time it was tentatively titled 'Beastiology', things animals do and was reportedly centered around fictional memoirs by animals. The collection of fables "detailing animals in strange adult situations" was released Sept. 28, 2010 under the title .

Articles

The New Yorker

Other articles/Unpublished

Audio recordings

Episodes of This American Life featuring Sedaris

References

External links

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:American essayists Category:American expatriates in France Category:American expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:American humorists Category:American people of Greek descent Category:Kent State University alumni Category:Lambda Literary Award winners Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:This American Life people Category:People from Binghamton, New York Category:People from Raleigh, North Carolina Category:School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Category:Thurber Prize for American Humor winners