by Truly Render

Gotham Humor Writing instructor Sara Barron isn’t shy about embracing new challenges. After failing as a band geek, Sara ditched her flute (“I also played the recorder,” she brags) and sought a new home in her Highland Park, Illinois high school: Drama Club.

"I was a huge musical theatre supporter," Sara says of her teenage years. With relish, she describes the full-length white spandex unitard that she wore in her school's production of A Chorus Line. Sara laughs before adding, "I was going to be a star."

Upon graduation, Sara moved to New York to attend NYU, where she majored in Theatre and Art History. After college, she spent two fruitless months on the audition circuit before realizing that if she wanted to perform, she was going to have to create her own material. That's when she started writing stand-up.

With its focus on dating and pop-culture, Sara's comedic style has been described as, "Sex and the City on steroids." In a bit entitled, The Porn, Sara reads excerpts from an erotic novel that she wrote in middle school. Littered with prepubescent misinformation and naivete, The Porn is dirty and unflinchingly honest. In other words: hilarious.

As time went on, Sara discovered that her brand of humor was best suited to storytelling as opposed to the one-liners of stand up. So she created a one-woman show, People Are Unappealing, as a showcase for her narrative flair. It was also her break into the literary world.

After a performance, Sara got an email from a literary agent dealing in books about "women with New York stories." People Are Unappealing fit the bill. But Sara had her doubts.

"The notion of writing an entire book was so daunting," she says, "I'd never even written anything over ten pages!"

Sara's desire to tell stories overrode her reservations. She focused on rewriting her stage act for the page, learning how to extract the vocal delivery from her work. Sara worked as a waitress to ensure that she'd have ample time to write, which she did every day.

Recalling the moment when her agent phoned with news of a book deal, Sara says, "It sounds cheesy, but I just remember thinking: 'great things are possible.'"

These days, Sara has essays in two forthcoming anthologies: Have I Got a Guy for You (Adams Media Corporation) and Rock and Roll Cage-match (Three Rivers Press). Her own essay collection, People Are Unappealing—Even Me (Random House), is scheduled to hit bookstores in Spring of 2009.

As to her next creative challenge, Sara says that she’s looking forward to getting back to her theatre roots, perhaps writing something for the stage. This time around, she’s got a lot more than a dejected flute under her belt. She’s got a book.