Reading List

Authors Like David Sedaris

Q: What should I read after Me Talk Pretty One Day?

Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island (1995) for an American abroad, or James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times (1933) for family comedy.

Q: Does David Sedaris have a new book?

Yes. The Land and Its People, a collection of essays, was published by Little, Brown in May 2026. A children’s picture book, The Selfish Sister, illustrated by Bob Staake, also came out in 2026.

Q: Which David Sedaris book should I read first?

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2001.

On 23 December 1992 NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast “Santaland Diaries”, David Sedaris’s account of working as an elf at Macy’s in New York. Ira Glass, who had heard him read in a Chicago club, produced it. Sedaris, born in 1956 and raised outside Raleigh, North Carolina, the second of six children, has been writing about that family ever since: his sister Amy, his father Lou, an IBM engineer who died in 2021, and his sister Tiffany, whose death in 2013 he wrote about in “Now We Are Five”. He now divides his time between West Sussex and New York, spends hours picking litter off the lanes near Rackham, and has had a waste vehicle named after him. His newest collection, The Land and Its People, came out in May 2026. The ten writers below share his material: families observed at close range, embarrassment turned into comedy, and the question of how far a funny true story may bend.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Humour · Personal essays · Family · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love David Sedaris, start with James Thurber, whose My Life and Hard Times (1933) turned an Ohio childhood into New Yorker comedy; Sedaris won the prize named after him in 2001. Nora Ephron made her own humiliations into essays, and Bill Bryson is the other American who settled in England and wrote about it. Further down are a Victorian who got there first and a memoirist who takes a stricter line on how much a true story may bend.

10 authors like David Sedaris

The Victorian original

Jerome K. Jerome

English · Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886), Three Men in a Boat (1889)

Jerome was born in Walsall in 1859 and died in 1927. Three Men in a Boat, about three friends on a boating holiday on the Thames, was a huge popular success; critics called his conversational style vulgar, and Punch nicknamed him “’Arry K. ’Arry”. He followed it with Three Men on the Bummel (1900).

The ancestor of the self-mocking narrator who blows small domestic disasters up into comedy. Readers who like Sedaris on travel and on his own incompetence will recognise the method a century earlier.

— Lisanne

Family chaos, New Yorker style

James Thurber

American · My Life and Hard Times (1933), “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939)

Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1894 and joined The New Yorker in 1927 with help from E. B. White, writing and drawing for it for the rest of his career. My Life and Hard Times collects his New Yorker pieces about his Columbus childhood. He lost an eye in a childhood accident and was legally blind by 1941. The Thurber Prize for American Humor, founded in 1997, went to Sedaris in 2001 for Me Talk Pretty One Day.

The model for the family memoir as comedy: the household is chaotic, the narrator is no more competent than anyone else, and every sentence is timed for the laugh. The most direct line back from Sedaris.

— Lisanne

Every book by James Thurber →

A family as a comic cast

Gerald Durrell

British · My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Durrell was born in Jamshedpur, India, in 1925; his family lived on Corfu from 1935 to 1939, the years My Family and Other Animals turns into comedy. The book shows his elder brother Lawrence living with the family, when in fact he lived elsewhere with his wife Nancy, who is left out; his mother and sister also questioned how true the book was. Durrell went on to found Jersey Zoo, which opened in 1959.

The British classic of the siblings-and-mother comic memoir, and a useful example of the same licence Sedaris takes: the family is real, the shape is the writer’s.

— Lisanne

The city, one line at a time

Fran Lebowitz

American · Metropolitan Life (1978), Social Studies (1981)

Lebowitz was born in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1950. Her two essay collections of the late 1970s and early 1980s made her name as New York’s sharpest observer of manners; since the mid-1990s she has been known for a long writer’s block, and she appears in Pretend It’s a City (2021), a Netflix series directed by Martin Scorsese.

The other great American comic voice of the reading tour and the talk-show sofa. Where Sedaris turns the joke on himself, Lebowitz turns it on everyone else, which makes them a good pair.

— Lisanne

Every book by Fran Lebowitz →

Embarrassment as material

Nora Ephron

American · Heartburn (1983), I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006)

Ephron was born in New York in 1941 and died there in 2012. She began as a journalist (Crazy Salad, 1975), wrote the novel Heartburn and the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally... (1989), and late in life published two bestselling essay collections about ageing, I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing (2010). An HBO documentary about her by her son Jacob Bernstein is called Everything Is Copy.

The same conviction that a humiliation is only wasted if you do not write it down. Ephron’s essays are shorter and more confiding, and suit readers who want Sedaris’s candour with less of his darkness.

— Lisanne

Every book by Nora Ephron →

An American in England

Bill Bryson

American-British · Notes from a Small Island (1995), The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006)

Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951, settled in Britain in 1977 and became a British citizen in 2014. Notes from a Small Island is a comic tour of his adopted country; The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a memoir of a 1950s Iowa childhood. He stopped writing books in 2020.

The obvious neighbour for Sedaris’s English essays: an American eye on British manners, and a childhood memoir built from family comedy. Bryson is gentler and more interested in places than people.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bill Bryson →

Letters and overheard lines

Nina Stibbe

British · Love, Nina (2013), Reasons to Be Cheerful (2019)

Stibbe was born in Leicestershire in 1962. Love, Nina collects the letters she wrote to her sister Victoria while working from 1982 as a nanny for the editor Mary-Kay Wilmers in London; Nick Hornby adapted it for BBC television in 2016. Her novel Reasons to Be Cheerful won the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.

The nearest British match for Sedaris’s published diaries: ordinary days, perfect overheard dialogue and a deadpan narrator who notices everything.

— Lisanne

The case for getting it right

Mary Karr

American · The Liars’ Club (1995), Lit (2009), The Art of Memoir (2015)

Karr was born in Groves, Texas, in 1955. The Liars’ Club is her memoir of a Texas childhood, and The Art of Memoir is her book about the form. In a 2015 NPR interview she described memory as faulty reportage and said she sends her manuscripts to the people she writes about because she mistrusts her own recollections.

The writer here who complicates Sedaris most. In 2007 Alex Heard argued in The New Republic that much of Sedaris’s work was not factual enough to be sold as nonfiction; Karr represents the stricter view of what a memoirist owes the people in the book, and she is often very funny too.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mary Karr →

The body, unglamorously

Samantha Irby

American · Meaty (2013), We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017), Quietly Hostile (2023)

Irby was born in 1980 and grew up in Evanston, Illinois. She began the blog bitches gotta eat in 2009, and her essay collections followed; she has also written for television, including HBO’s And Just Like That...

The contemporary essayist closest to Sedaris’s willingness to expose himself: bodies, money and family, all told for the laugh. Irby is blunter and more confessional.

— Lisanne

Every book by Samantha Irby →

New York essays, a generation on

Sloane Crosley

American · I Was Told There’d Be Cake (2008), Look Alive Out There (2018), Grief Is for People (2024)

Crosley was born in New York in 1978. Both I Was Told There’d Be Cake and Look Alive Out There were finalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the award Sedaris won in 2001. She has also written novels, including Cult Classic (2022), and the memoir Grief Is for People.

The same form, the comic personal essay built around one mishap, from a writer of the next generation. A natural next step for readers who have finished all of Sedaris’s collections.

— Lisanne

Where to start if you loved David Sedaris

If you want family comedy from the source, read Thurber.

My Life and Hard Times (1933) is short, and its Columbus childhood is the ancestor of the Sedaris family stories.

If you want the Corfu version, read Durrell.

My Family and Other Animals (1956) is the British classic of siblings, a mother and a narrator who watches them all.

If you want an American in England, read Bryson.

Notes from a Small Island (1995) is the companion to Sedaris’s English essays.

If you want the diaries, read Nina Stibbe.

Love, Nina (2013) has the same ear for overheard lines as Theft by Finding.

If you are new to Sedaris himself, start with Me Talk Pretty One Day.

The 2000 collection won the Thurber Prize; his newest is The Land and Its People (2026).

Frequently asked questions about authors like David Sedaris

Who writes like David Sedaris?

James Thurber, Nora Ephron and Bill Bryson are the closest matches, with Samantha Irby and Sloane Crosley among the contemporary essayists.

What should I read after Me Talk Pretty One Day?

Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island (1995) for an American abroad, or James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times (1933) for family comedy.

Does David Sedaris have a new book?

Yes. The Land and Its People, a collection of essays, was published by Little, Brown in May 2026. A children’s picture book, The Selfish Sister, illustrated by Bob Staake, also came out in 2026.

Which David Sedaris book should I read first?

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2001.

Are David Sedaris’s stories true?

They are based on his life but shaped for comedy. In 2007 Alex Heard argued in The New Republic that much of the work was not factual enough to be sold as nonfiction; other writers replied that readers understand the exaggeration is part of the joke.

Is David Sedaris like Bill Bryson?

Both are Americans who settled in England and write comic nonfiction, but Bryson writes mainly about places and Sedaris mainly about people, above all his family.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like David Sedaris

10 authors like David Sedaris

Jerome K. Jerome

James Thurber

Gerald Durrell

Fran Lebowitz

Nora Ephron

Bill Bryson

Nina Stibbe

Mary Karr

Samantha Irby

Sloane Crosley

Where to start if you loved David Sedaris

Frequently asked questions about authors like David Sedaris

Who writes like David Sedaris?

What should I read after Me Talk Pretty One Day?

Does David Sedaris have a new book?

Which David Sedaris book should I read first?

Are David Sedaris’s stories true?

Is David Sedaris like Bill Bryson?

Lisanne Swart

Thanks for reading,

Offerings

My Bookshelf |

The Hotpot |

Questions from readers |

Links

Instagram |

Pinterest |

Hi, there.

Home

About

My Bookshelf

Weekly’s

Stay tuned: sign up for the newsletter!