The organizers behind Sedaris’ segments plan to broadcast a tribute to David Rakoff, a celebration of Dorothy Parker, and one show focusing on the theme of “Family Values.” For New York listeners, the show airs on WNYC every Sunday on AM 820 at 1pm and on FM 93.9 at 10pm.

Here’s more about the radio show: “There is a theme to each Selected Shorts episode and performance. Several stories are presented around each theme. The stories are always fiction, sometimes classic, sometimes new, always performed by great actors from stage, screen and television who bring these short stories to life.”

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He wrote three books: Don’t Get Too Comfortable, Fraud and the Thurber Prize-winning essay collection, Half Empty. He was also a frequent contributor on This American Life, and you can listen to all his past episodes at this link.

Here’s an excerpt from an essay he wrote about his first glimpse of Times Square in college, a perfect mix of writing and humor: “The colossus towering over this particular moment shuddering between decadence and recovery was not Bartholdi’s Lady Liberty but the first of Calvin Klein’s bronzed gods, high above Times Square. Leaning back, eyes closed, in his blinding white underpants against a sinuous form in similarly white Aegean plaster, his gargantuan, sleeping, groinful beauty was simultaneously Olympian and intimate, awesome and comforting. Here was the city in briefs: uncaring, cruelly beautiful, and out of reach.” (Photo via Don Denton)

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The finalists for the $5,000 Thurber Prize have been revealed. Follow these links to read free samples of the finalists: Sleepwalk with Me & Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia, Half Empty by David Rakoff and Sports From Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition by Rick Reilly.

This year’s panel of judges included two-time Thurber Prize winner Ian Frazier, 2010 Thurber Prize finalist Jancee Dunn and novelist Meg Wolitzer. The winner will be revealed at the awards ceremony on October 3rd in New York City’s Algonquin Hotel.

Here’s more from the release: “The 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor will be conferred upon the author and publisher of the outstanding book of humor writing published in the United States between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. Initiated in 1996, thirty-five years after the death of this key figure in the development of American humor, it is the nation’s highest recognition of the art of humor writing.”

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