Thalia Book Club: David Rakoff's Half Empty and Sloane Crosley's How Did You Get This Number

The whip-smart and funny authors of  the essay collections Don't Get Too Comfortable (Rakoff) and I Was Told There'd Be Cake (Crosley) join up to examine our contemporary culture and the many ways life can go awry in New York City, as presented in their new books. Ira Glass (This American Life) will introduce the authors.

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Performance playlist:

Introductions by Ira Glass

Readings and Conversation
Sloane Crosley and David Rakoff

A Discussion with the Audience

Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Was Told There’d Be Cake, which was a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor and is in development as a series at HBO, and most recently How Did You Get This Number. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, New York Observer, Playboy, The Village Voice, Teen Vogue, Salon, Black Book, Radar, and The Believer. She is also the Associate Director of Publicity at Vintage/Anchor Books.

Ira Glass is the host and executive producer of the documentary radio program This American Life. Under his editorial direction, the program has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence: the Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Award. The This American Life podcast is downloaded by over 500,000 people a week, and the television version of the show, produced for the Showtime network, has won two Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

David Rakoff is the author of the books Half Empty, Don’t Get Too Comfortable and Fraud, and is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Outside, GQ and Salon, among others. As an actor and director, he has worked with Amy and David Sedaris on the plays Stiches, One Woman Shoe, The Little Frieda Mysteries, and The Book of Liz, and can be seen in the films Capote (fleetingly), Strangers with Candy (fleetingly; mutely), and, most recently, the short film The New Tenants, winner of a 2010 Academy Award.