How did David Sedaris become famous?

September 20, 2006 11:20 AM

How did David Sedaris rise from obscurity to fame?

His wikipedia page kind of glosses over the issue, saying that after he worked "a string of odd jobs ... , Sedaris achieved prominence with the radio essay The SantaLand Diaries."

How do you go from working a string of odd jobs to being featured on This American Life and NPR? Did he publish a book, and then get picked up for the radio bit? Does he better explain how he got discovered in an interview or essay somewhere that I haven't read?

I've always wondered this, and hopefully someone can chime in with an answer.

posted by c:\awesome to media & arts (3 comments total)

The Index Interview
posted by R. Mutt at 11:27 AM on September 20, 2006

"After high school, he enrolled in Kent State University, but dropped out shortly thereafter, hitchhiked cross-country, and started the series of menial jobs that he eventually documented in his much-lauded essays. Although he didn't read much as a child, he started keeping a diary during this hitchhiking stint and caught up on classics and contemporary fiction. He moved to Chicago at age 27 to attend the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied painting and taught writing courses, eventually graduating in 1987. Although National Public Radio's Ira Glass discovered him entertaining audiences in a Chicago club with selections from his diary, he didn't start contributing to NPR until after he moved to New York in 1991. His writing career took off when he chronicled his experiences working as a Macy's elf in "Santaland Diaries," which aired originally on NPR's Morning Edition in 1992."

From here.
posted by mattbucher at 1:10 PM on September 20, 2006

Ira Glass needed a Christmas story and kept featuring Sedaris on the Christmas shows. Glass just happened to stop in an open night story night at some club in NYC. They didn't know each other when Sedaris lived in Chicago, I believe.
posted by onepapertiger at 1:21 PM on September 20, 2006