DAVID SEDARIS

@ RAUE CENTER FOR THE ARTS
OCTOBER 23, 2024 @ 7P

David Sedaris is the bestselling author of the books Calypso, Theft By Finding, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4.

With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, David Sedaris has become one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that Sedaris is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today.

More info at davidsedarisbooks.com

PLEASE NOTE:
No photography or videography of any kind will be permitted. There will be no beverage service during this event.

Biography

David Sedaris is one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers. He is a master of satire and one of today’s most observant writers.

Beloved for his personal essays and short stories, David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, and Calypso, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. He is the author of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, a collection of fables with illustrations by Ian Falconer. He is also the author of an essay-length ebook titled Themes and Variations. Each of these books was an immediate bestseller. He was also the editor of Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. His pieces regularly appear in The New Yorker and have twice been included in “The Best American Essays.” The first volume of his diaries Theft By Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) was a New York Times best-selling book. As a companion piece to the book, Jeffrey Jenkins published and edited an art book of Sedaris’s diary covers, entitled David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium. His book, The Best of Me, is a collection of 42 previously published stories and essays, about which novelist Andrew Sean Greer wrote in the New York Times: “You must read “The Best of Me.” It will be a new experience, knowing that enough time has passed to find humor in the hardest parts of life. More than ever — we’re allowed to laugh.” The second volume of his diaries, A Carnival of Snackery, Diaries (2003-2020) (Little Brown/Hachette, October 5, 2021) was also a New York Times bestseller and the audiobook was selected as part of Apple’s Best Audiobooks of the Year for 2021. His next book will be Happy-Go- Lucky (Little, Brown, May 31, 2022).

Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have collaborated under the name “The Talent Family” and have written half-a-dozen plays which have been produced at La Mama, Lincoln Center, and The Drama Department in New York City. These plays include Stump the Host, Stitches, One Woman Shoe, which received an Obie Award, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and The Book of Liz, which was published in book form by Dramatists Play Service.

Sedaris has been nominated for five Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word and Best Comedy Album. His audio recordings include “David Sedaris: Live for Your Listening Pleasure” and “David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall.” A feature film adaptation of his story C.O.G. was released after a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival (2013). Since 2011, he can be heard annually on a series of live recordings on BBC Radio 4 entitled “Meet David Sedaris.” In 2019 David Sedaris became a regular contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, and his Masterclass, David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling and Humor, was released.

There are over 16 million copies of his books in print and they have been translated into 32 languages. He has been awarded the Terry Southern Prize for Humor, Thurber Prize for American Humor, Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, Time 2001 Humorist of the Year Award, as well as the Medal for Spoken Language from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In March 2019 he was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2020 the New York Public Library voted Me Talk Pretty One Day one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years.

CHECK OUT HIS NEW BOOK!

David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso.

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.

But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Tim Paul, board president

John Jacobsen, vice president

Chuck Stevens, treasurer

Luanne Flavin, secretary

John Green
Mike H. Johnson
Richard Kuranda
Jack Minsley
Rich Naponelli
Michelle Nowland
Sandra Pierce
Regan Shepley
Steven Szalaj
Jerry Trachsler

Stacey McInerney
Volunteer Liaison

RAUE CENTER STAFF

Richard Kuranda
Raue Center CEO & Founding Artistic Director of Williams Street Repertory

Justin Wellington
Managing Director

Jenna Klaproth
Operations Manager

Meredith Schaefer-Flowers
Director of Marketing &
Institutional Advancement

Michele V. Knight
Marketing Manager

James Knight
Economic Development Manager

Rob Scharlow
Raue Center School for the Arts
Director of Education

Maribeth Ling
Front of House Manager

Chris Tumblin
Raue Center Director of Production

Lisa Giebler
Technical Director

Ryan Meadow
Raue Center Production Manager

Robin Hughes
Executive Producer / Production Manager

James Mablin
Resident Music Director

Box Office Staff
Dan Cosgray
Naomi Unverzagt

About Raue Center For The Arts

Raue Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching the lives of all through the arts. For 20 years, they have provided quality programming – striving to make it pertinent, available, and affordable to all. As a painstakingly restored, 1920s regional showcase theatre named for its benefactor—Lucile Raue—Raue Center has attracted the finest stars, Broadway shows, musicians and artists. Named on the League of Historic American Theatres, Raue Center is one of the finest examples of restored art and decor in the nation. The 750-seat theatre, located in historic downtown Crystal Lake, Illinois, is a gathering place for our region’s citizens and has become a true destination. 

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