AT HOME WITH

David Sedaris

The humorist on art collecting, interacting with fans and a surprising upside of the Upper East Side.

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David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

By Addie Morfoot Photographs by Winnie Au

May 29, 2026

When the essayist David Sedaris decided to purchase a home in Manhattan in 2019 after living in Europe for two decades, he set his sights on the Upper East Side.

David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

“What’s really great about this neighborhood is that there are no tourists,” said Mr. Sedaris. “There is no real reason for people to come here, unless you are going to the Met or something like that.”

David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

His sister, the actor and comedian Amy Sedaris, urged Mr. Sedaris, 69, and his husband, Hugh Hamrick, to buy an apartment in the Greenwich Village building where she lives.

David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

“She wanted us to get it because she didn’t want neighbors,” said Mr. Hamrick, 66. “And she knew we would be traveling all of the time.”

David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

But Mr. Sedaris, who writes from his home office, spent the ’90s renting an apartment in SoHo, close to Greenwich Village. He didn’t appreciate the neighborhood’s capacity for noise.

David Sedaris, wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt, a blazer and white pants sits at a desk in a room that is mostly empty aside from the desk and a bookshelf.

“Someone’s car alarm would go off for hours and hours, and somebody would be playing on a drum set on the street,” said Mr. Sedaris. “If someone tried that on the Upper East Side, that would be shut down immediately.”

Mr. Sedaris and Mr. Hamrick wanted a large space to house their growing art collection, which includes two Picasso paintings. So, they bought a 2,500-square-foot apartment just a few blocks from Central Park.

After moving in, Mr. Sedaris told a friend that she should look for an apartment nearby. After visiting the area, she told Mr. Sedaris that “every place she passed had people crying inside.”

“That’s because we are surrounded by hospitals,” explained Mr. Sedaris, adding in jest, “I want to be able to walk to my chemo appointments.”

In 2020, during the pandemic, the couple purchased the penthouse directly above their apartment. It had multiple terraces overlooking New York City’s skyline.

“It’s nice at night,” said Mr. Sedaris. “It looks like the backdrop to a talk show.”

Mr. Sedaris designed the office where he writes to resemble a Park Avenue therapist’s office. A white rug next to his desk features black letters that spell “Trouble.”

“Everyone wants me to get a sofa in here,” Mr. Sedaris said. “But I want my patients to just lie on the trouble rug.”

Mr. Sedaris writes every day — including on Christmas and his birthday — for five to six hours. Mr. Hamrick, who painted the office walls, often appears in Mr. Sedaris’s witty essays. The author also draws on friends, family and daily observations as fodder for his pieces, which have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1995.

A study of Franz Kline’s 1950 painting “Chief” hangs on one of the walls.

“It was done on a page of the phone book,” Mr. Sedaris said. “I want paintings by masters, but I want small ones.”

The full-size “Chief,” the writer estimates, would cost about $40 million if it were for sale and not hanging at the MoMA.

“I only paid $17 million for this,” he quipped.

The living room features two couches and a piano.

The piano in the living room is one of the reasons Mr. Sedaris and Mr. Hamrick purchased the penthouse apartment in 2020. Mr. Hamrick, who plays the piano as a hobby, didn’t want Mr. Sedaris in the apartment when he practiced.

The living room features two couches and a piano.

“I don’t want him judging me,” said Mr. Hamrick.

The Kawai baby grand piano, replaced “this ugly, upright, root beer-colored piano,” Mr. Sedaris said.

“I told Hugh, ‘No. That thing is not coming into the house.’” That piano was shipped to Mr. Hamrick’s studio in London.

Since 1994, Mr. Sedaris has published 11 essay collections, two volumes of curated diary entries, a book of fables and two children’s books. His latest essay collection, “The Land and Its People,” was released this week.

“I love the name of the book because if the story takes place somewhere and includes people, then it fits in the book,” he said.

When he is not writing best-selling books that are translated into dozens of languages, Mr. Sedaris is reading his published and unpublished work at sold-out venues across the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia. His prolific and acclaimed satirical writing and nonstop touring have made him the rare author who owns homes in New York, Paris, London, and the English countryside, as well as two beach houses in North Carolina.

“I had no money for a long time,” said Mr. Sedaris. “Nobody gave me money. My father cut me out of his will. So I don’t feel bad about having made the money I have.”

His two New York City apartments have a combined six bedrooms (only two of which are used as bedrooms) and eight bathrooms.

“If you tell people, ‘I had company, and I had to clean eight bathrooms, you get no sympathy,’” joked Mr. Sedaris. “It’s like when you say to people, ‘I went looking for that sweater, and I realized it’s in London.’”

In addition to real estate, Mr. Sedaris invests his money in clothing by Comme des Garçons and original artworks. The walls surrounding the piano include paintings by Picasso, Philip Guston, Georg Baselitz, Paul Klee and Günther Förg.

When Mr. Sedaris graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987, he said he knew that he “didn’t have any talent” as a painter. He thinks that realization makes him the “perfect person” to collect art.

“I’m a supporter, and I appreciate it,” he said. “I don’t feel like, ‘Goddamn it. Why can’t I do that?’”

A long brown dining room table with five chairs. A sideboard against a wall holds art objects and books.

The couple eat their meals in the upstairs kitchen area. They host dinner parties directly below in the formal dining room.

A small Picasso hangs over a table with tapered candles and a lamp.

Mr. Sedaris’s art collecting took off in earnest in the early aughts. He bought his first Picasso, “Verre et Paquet de Cigarettes,” in 2015.

A small Picasso hangs over a table with tapered candles and a lamp.

“We bought it in London and didn’t realize that the second we took possession of it there, we would have to pay a 50 percent tax on it,” said Mr. Sedaris, who took the painting to New York instead. “So, for the price of the tax, we bought this apartment. We bought the apartment for the painting.”

A small Picasso hangs over a table with tapered candles and a lamp.

The couple purchased their first Upper East Side apartment for $2.5 million. They spent another $2.5 million on the penthouse.

In his second office, Mr. Sedaris opens fan mail. Earlier in the day, before a photographer and reporter arrived at his home, the author spent a few hours responding to 150 letters he had received that week. Mr. Sedaris said that he responds to almost everyone who writes to him, but refuses to write to people who are mad at him.

Take, for example, the woman who asked the author to inscribe a copy of his 2024 children’s book, “Pretty Ugly,” to her granddaughter, Morgan. Mr. Sedaris wrote: “To Morgan, you are destructive and difficult to love.” The grandmother, he said, was “furious.”

Above his desk are 11 paintings depicting diseases of the eye’s interior, created by a French doctor in 1850. Mr. Sedaris gave them to Mr. Hamrick on his birthday earlier this year.

“Don’t they look so modern?” Mr. Sedaris asked.

Mr. Sedaris and Mr. Hamrick met in 1990 and recently revealed that they have been married for 10 years for financial reasons.

“I’m a husband, but I identify as a boyfriend,” Mr. Sedaris said. “And I feel like everyone has to respect that.”

A rubber fetus about two inches long sits on the bookshelf. Mr. Sedaris ordered “a ton” of them to give away during his many book signings.

“I give them to teenage girls,” said Mr. Sedaris. “I say, ‘You know what? You could have one of these inside of you — a 16-week-old — in no time at all, and it’s really going to help you in high school.’”

A foyer is entirely white, akin to an art gallery. A painting, a photograph and a small statue are visible.

The penthouse foyer resembles the entryway to an art museum.

A Tony Matelli metal sculpture in the shape of a plant sits on the baseboard nearby. Amy Sedaris gave it to her brother for Christmas in 2015.

“That’s a really, really good present,” said Mr. Sedaris.

When asked why, Mr. Sedaris said: “Well, because it’s really expensive.” He added that it is also “a very nice piece of art.”

A bust of Jesus by the 17th-century sculptor Thomas Schwanthaler sits in front of a Guston painting from 1971.

“I’m not a big Jesus-y person,” Mr. Sedaris said. “But I don’t know, there is just such pathos to it. I just loved the veins painted beside his eyes.”

A portrait of Mr. Sedaris sitting next to a bookshelf.

The couple have plans to put a staircase just off the foyer that will connect the two apartments. “We have to get rid of one if we put the staircase,” said Mr. Sedaris of his two kitchens, because legally they can only have one in a combined apartment. He and Mr. Hamrick have decided to keep the downstairs kitchen.

A portrait of Mr. Sedaris sitting next to a bookshelf.

“I’ll turn the other one into a pantry. Then I’ll turn it back into a kitchen,” joked Mr. Hamrick, who was heading to the airport to catch a flight to London so he could check on their other homes.

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