Document Type

Press Release

Publication Date

10-1-2003

Abstract

Award-winning humorist and National Public Radio commentator David Sedaris brings his collection of witty observances on life to Lawrence University Tuesday, Oct. 14 in the second installment of the college’s 2003 2004 convocation series. The program, “An Evening with David Sedaris” at 7:10 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, is free and open to the public.

Sedaris, who claims his idea of fun is “sociological problems and medical mishaps,” launched his career as one of America’s funniest social commentators in 1992 on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” He shared stories from his book “SantaLand Diaries” about his strange-but-true experiences as one of Santa’s elves at Macy’s in New York.

He has since written four more books: “Naked,” “Barrel Fever,” “Holidays on Ice” and his most recent, “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” The largely autobiographical collections of essays chronicle his life growing up in North Carolina with “voluble” parents and five siblings, his collection of part-time jobs, including an office worker, moving company employee and an apartment cleaner in New York, and taking French classes as an expatriate in Paris, where he currently resides.

Collaborating with his sister, Amy Sedaris, under the name The Talent Family, Sedaris also has written several plays that have been produced in New York, including “One Woman Shoe,” which was honored with an Obie award.

A one-time writing instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he had earned a degree in 1987, and frequent contributor to Esquire magazine, Sedaris was saluted as Time magazine’s “humorist of the year” in 2001. That same year he was named just the third recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Following his address, Sedaris will conduct a book signing in Lawrence’s Shattuck Hall, Room 163.

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