Davis
Sedaris is openly and happily gay and living mainly in France with his
partner, Hugh Hamrick, a painter, set designer, and theater director.
The couple divide their time between a Left Bank apartment in Paris, a
house in Normandy, and a flat in London's Kensington neighborhood.

This
is the eighty-ninth post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

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
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary.[

As of 2008, his books have collectively sold seven million copies.[10]
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
partner, Hugh Hamrick.


Sedaris was born in Binghamton, New York, to Lou and Sharon (nee
Leonard)[Sedaris and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is of
half-Greek-American descent His mother was Protestant and his father was
Greek Orthodox.


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.[19] 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". 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 publishing 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".For that book, Sedaris won the 2001
Thurber Prize for American Humor, and was named "Humorist of the Year"
by Time magazine.



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, Glass said that Sedaris'
next book would be a collection of animal fables; 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. 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."


The Talent Family

Sedaris is also a playwright, having written 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.

For  a complete list of David Sedaris’s work go to www.wikipedia.com