If all you know of David Sedaris is the annual holiday rebroadcast of his Santa Diaries on NPR, that may have been enough to make you a lifelong fan. But his oeuvre encompasses so much more than that mordantly funny account of a day in the life of a department store elf. In best-selling books like Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, he’s proven to be a master of the revelatory comic essay, and in personal appearances around the country he has regaled but also touched audiences with his bone-dry humor and disarming candor about his family and foibles. In his latest book, Calypso, he has moved into even more fraught emotional territory — aging and mortality — and despite the fact that it’s being called his darkest book yet, or maybe because of that, it’s getting rave reviews; the actor Alan Cumming proclaimed in the New York Times that Sedaris’s worldview is so addictive “he seriously could start a cult.” Join the cult tonight at the Straz.

5/15, 7:30 p.m., Morsani Hall at the Straz Center, $35-$55, 813-229-STAR (7827), strazcenter.org.