51 Facts About David Rakoff

David Benjamin Rakoff was a Canadian-born American writer of prose and poetry based in New York City, who wrote humorous and sometimes autobiographical non-fiction essays.

David Rakoff was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the youngest of three children.

David Rakoff wrote that almost every generation of his family fled from one place to another.

The David Rakoff family left South Africa in 1961, for political reasons, and moved to Montreal for seven years.

In 1967, when he was three, David Rakoff's family relocated to Toronto.

David Rakoff attended high school at the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, and graduated in 1982.

David Rakoff spent his third year of college at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and graduated in 1986.

David Rakoff worked in Japan as a translator with a fine arts publisher.

David Rakoff's work was interrupted after four months when, at age 22, he contracted Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphatic cancer he referred to as "a touch of cancer".

David Rakoff returned to Toronto for 18 months of treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

David Rakoff worked at a literary agency for 3 years and then as an editor and communications manager for 9 years at HarperCollins,.

David Rakoff wrote to Sedaris in 1992, after hearing him read on the radio his essay, "Santaland Diaries", about being a Christmas elf, which was to make him famous.

That day, David Rakoff wrote to Sedaris immediately to ask if he could publish Sedaris' works.

When Glass began This American Life, David Rakoff became involved with the new show at its inception.

David Rakoff was a prolific freelance writer and a regular contributor to Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Outside Magazine and The New York Times Magazine.

David Rakoff's writing appeared in Business 2.0, Details, Harper's Bazaar, Nerve, New York Magazine, Salon, Seed, Slate, Spin, The New York Observer, Vogue, Wired and other publications.

David Rakoff wrote on a wide and eclectic range of topics.

David Rakoff published three bestselling collections of essays, which include his own illustrations.

David Rakoff described the first-person essays that comprise the collection as more inwardly focused than his later work.

Greil Marcus said David Rakoff's stories are not as funny as those he read on the radio.

However, David Rakoff was criticised in The Washington Post for misusing the word "like", with the reviewer suggesting that David Rakoff's prose could use tightening.

David Rakoff said the book is "essentially about pessimism and melancholy: all the other less than pleasant to feel emotions that because they are less than pleasant to feel have been more or less stricken from the public discourse but in fact have their uses and even a certain beauty to them".

David Rakoff contributed essays to the following anthologies of non-fiction published by other writers:.

David Rakoff was a regular contributor to the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International, in which each week writers and performers contribute pieces on a chosen topic, usually in the first person.

The first was "Christmas Freud", an account of David Rakoff's impersonating Sigmund Freud in the window of Barneys department store during the holidays.

David Rakoff says that This American Life let him have his own take on things and break the bounds of just being a journalist.

David Rakoff was the first person to host a This American Life episode in place of Ira Glass, followed only by Nancy Updike.

David Rakoff was featured on This American Life's live broadcast, "Invisible Made Visible" on May 10,2012, from the Skirball Theater, NYU.

David Rakoff returned to the Canadian airwaves with his regular appearances on CBC Radio's Talking Books, hosted by Ian Brown.

The August 17,2012, episode of This American Life, titled "Our Friend David Rakoff," was dedicated entirely to his essays on the program.

David Rakoff adapted the screenplay for the Academy Award winning short film The New Tenants, originally written by Anders Thomas Jensen.

David Rakoff sold what he called a "meta screenplay", written with Dave Hill, based on a fictitious tour to publicize the book Don't Get Too Comfortable.

David Rakoff performed in the theatre at university and acted while working full-time in the publishing industry and later while freelancing as a writer.

David Rakoff has said that he likes acting because it involves other people, unlike writing.

David Rakoff has characterised most of the roles that he auditioned for as "Fudgy McPacker" or "Jewy McHebrew".

David Rakoff said that he has continued with his theatre work, since such acting stereotypes are not so prevalent in stage work, because audiences are more sophisticated, and there is not as much money at stake, meaning that there is not such risk-averse casting.

David Rakoff has noted that, as a writer, being gay and being Jewish does not limit his readership or the subjects he can write about in the way it limits his acting roles.

David Rakoff can be seen in the Academy Award winning short film The New Tenants.

The film begins with David Rakoff delivering a bitter, humorous but pessimistic monologue on life and death.

David Rakoff appeared as himself in the documentary Florent: Queen of the Meat Market about a local restaurant and in a film about the book State by State, in which one of his essays is published.

David Rakoff appeared as modelling agent Rich Tuchman in As the World Turns, a television soap opera.

David Rakoff wrote about that experience in the essay "Lather, Rinse, Repeat", published in the collection Fraud.

David Rakoff appeared as Todd in Cosby and as Frank in the TV show Snake 'n' Bacon.

David Rakoff appeared in the Sedaris's The Little Freida Mysteries at La Mama, of which The New York Times said David Rakoff was part of a "deft ensemble", and which received a good review in Newsday.

The Canadian-born David Rakoff voiced the part of the US President Thomas Jefferson for the audio book of Jon Stewart's America : A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction and provided the voice of Polish-American Leon Czolgosz in the audio book version of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation.

David Rakoff was in the voice cast of the 2009 Williams Street animated pilot Snake 'n' Bacon.

David Rakoff's direction was described as "clearly focused" by The New York Times and "brisk" by Newsday.

From 1982, David Rakoff lived in the United States, first as a student, then as a resident alien.

David Rakoff chronicled the experience of becoming an American citizen in an essay published in Don't Get Too Comfortable.

David Rakoff became a US citizen in 2003, while at the same time retaining his Canadian citizenship.

In 2010, while writing the book Half Empty, David Rakoff was diagnosed with a malignant tumor, and later developed a post-radiation sarcoma - a result of an ineffective treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma in his 20s - behind his left collarbone and began chemotherapy.