David Sedaris

Read a diary entry on American radio in 1992 about working as a Christmas elf at Macy's, and turned a job cleaning apartments into a career.

The essays are about his family, mainly, and they are funnier and crueller than the affectionate reputation suggests: his mother's drinking, his father's favouritism, his sister Tiffany's death. Me Talk Pretty One Day covers learning French badly in Paris. Calypso is the one where the jokes stop protecting him.

A 2007 fact-checking piece established that he exaggerates freely in work published as nonfiction, and his publisher reclassified some of it as a result. He has never disputed the charge, which is part of why readers forgave it.