David Sedaris

Born in New York State in 1956, David Sedaris is the second of six children. An engineer at IBM, his father was relocated to North Carolina when Sedaris was still young, taking the family to Raleigh, where Sedaris spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence. After graduating from high school, Sedaris attended Western Carolina University, majoring in art because he wanted to match his younger sister Gretchen’s artistic talent. Before long, he transferred to Kent State University, where he continued to major in art until he finally dropped out in 1977, at which point he devoted himself to conceptual art and started taking crystal meth—a habit he eventually kicked around the time he stopped practicing conceptual art. In 1983 he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1987. While he was living in Chicago, the radio host Ira Glass heard him reading from his diary in a club and asked him to come on his show, The Wild Room. Sedaris’s appearance on The Wild Room went over extremely well, and he became a regular contributor to National Public Radio, reading humorous essays on the air and becoming popular amongst public radio listeners. On the success of his radio appearances, he published his first book, Barrel Fever, in 1994, followed by Naked and Holidays on Ice in 1997 and Me Talk Pretty One Day in 2000. He has now published 11 books and is a regular contributor to Ira Glass’s radio program This American Life. His work also frequently appears in The New Yorker.