David Sedaris
(born December 26, 1956) is a Grammy Award-nominated Greek-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. Each of his 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. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
s of }} 2008 [], his books have collectively sold seven million copies. [6] 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 with his boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick.
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Biography
Early life and "SantaLand Diaries"
Sedaris was born to a
Greek family in
Binghamton,
New York, and raised in a suburban section of
Raleigh,
North Carolina. He is the second child of Lou Sedaris, an
IBM engineer, and Sharon Sedaris; his siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lisa, Gretchen,
Amy,
[7] Tiffany,
[8], and Paul. 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 Sanderson High School in Raleigh, Sedaris briefly attended
Western Carolina University [9] before transferring and dropping out of
Kent State University in 1977, then 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 "", 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
.
[10] Sedaris later said, "I owe everything to Ira....My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand."
[11] 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,
[12] and made Sedaris what
The New York Times
called "a minor phenomenon".
He began recording a monthly segment for NPR (based on entries in his diary, and edited and produced by Glass), considered adapting "SantaLand Diaries" into a screenplay for
Touchstone Pictures, and signed a two-book deal with
Little, Brown and Company.
In 1993, he told
The New York Times
that he was polishing his first book, a collection of stories and essays, and had 70 pages written of his second book, a novel "about a man who keeps a diary and whom Mr. Sedaris described as 'not me, but a lot like me.'"
Collections and mainstream success
In 1994, Sedaris released the book of stories and essays titled
Barrel Fever
. When, in 1995, Ira Glass began hosting the weekly hour-long
PRI/
Chicago Public Radio radio show
This American Life
, Sedaris became a frequent contributor. He also began publishing essays in
Esquire
and
The New Yorker
. In 1997, he published another collection of essays,
Naked
. His next book,
Me Talk Pretty One Day
, was written mostly in
France over a period of seven months, and was published in 2000 to "practically unanimous rave reviews".
[13] 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.
[14] 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."
[15]
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.
The audiobook of
Dress Your Family,
read by Sedaris, was nominated for a
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album; the same year, Sedaris was nominated for a
Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his recording
Live at Carnegie Hall.
In March 2006, Ira Glass said that Sedaris' next book would be a collection of animal
fables;
[16] that year, Sedaris included several animal fables in his US book tour, and three of his fables were broadcast on
This American Life
.
In the
March 19,
2007 issue of
The New Republic
,
Outside Magazine
editor Alex Heard fact-checked Sedaris's books and alleged that some of what Sedaris described as true events actually never happened.
[17] 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.
For his part, Sedaris said he had not read the article, and, of the allegations, stated, "It just bothers the shit out of me."
[20]
In September 2007, a new Sedaris collection was announced for publication on
June 3,
2008.
[21] 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,
Sedaris said in an October 2007 interview that the collection might include a "surprisingly brief story about [his] decision to quit smoking....along with stories about a Polish crybaby, throwing shit in a paraplegic's yard, chimpanzees at a typing school, and people visiting [him] in France."
[23]
In December 2008, David Sedaris traveled to
Binghamton University to act as the fall commencement speaker; he then received an honorary doctorate from current university president
Lois B. DeFleur.
[24]
The Talent Family
Sedaris is also a playwright, having authored with his sister, actress
Amy Sedaris, several plays under the name "The Talent Family". These include
Stump the Host
(1993),
Stitches
(1994),
The Little Frieda Mysteries
(1997), All were produced and presented by
Meryl Vladimer when she was the artistic director of "the CLUB" at
La MaMa, E.T.C. and
The Book of Liz
(2002) produced by
Ania A. Shapiro. Sedaris also co-authored
Incident at Cobbler's Knob
, which was presented and produced by David Rockwell at the
Lincoln Center Festival. Sets for those performances were designed by Sedaris's longtime partner,
Hugh Hamrick, who also directed two of them,
The Book of Liz
and
Incident at Cobbler's Knob
.
Works
Story and essay collections
- Barrel Fever
(1994)
- Naked
(1997)
- Holidays on Ice
(1997)
- Me Talk Pretty One Day
(2000)
- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
(2004)
- Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules
(editor, 2005)
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames
(2008)
Audio recordings
- Me Talk Pretty One Day
(2001)
- The David Sedaris Box Set
(2002)
- Live At Carnegie Hall
(2003)
- ''Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames
(2008)
Episodes of This American Life
featuring Sedaris