Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom - Tapa dura

"Sara Benincasa's comedy is uplifting, deeply personal, and very funny. As difficult as her agoraphobia is to manage, she's pulled through it-beautifully. Agorafabulous! manages to make you laugh even as she's peeing into cereal bowls and hiding them under her bed." -- Rob Delaney "Agorafabulous! is laugh-out loud funny, even as it's taking on deadly serious issues." -- Feministing.com "Funny and unflinchingly honest... Benincasa discovers her gift for comedy and storytelling, and finds tranquility." -- Publishers Weekly "A blisteringly funny yet affecting debut memoir about a young woman's struggle to overcome panic disorder and agoraphobia. Comedian Benincasa recounts her adolescent devolution into a 'full-on, obsessive, cowering, trembling agoraphobe' [who] discover[s], by accident, the healing power of stand-up comedy. Fabulously quirky and outrageous." -- Kirkus Reviews "Hilarious... With expert pacing, the stand-up comic mixes humor and poignant anecdotes from her teen, college, and young adult life. As her empowering tale makes clear, she survives and thrives (with a little help from family, friends, and Prozac)." -- Booklist "Sara's story of overcoming a debilitating fear is told with such honesty and hilarity that all I want to do now is hang out with her in a tiny room and not let her leave until she tells me more stories." -- Sarah Colonna, author of Life as I Blow It "If I ever get thrown in a mental institution, my only hope would be having Sara as a cellmate. Her funny and poignant perspective makes Agorafabulous! a stellar debut." -- Julie Klam, author of You Had Me at Woof "Sara's comedy is uplifting, deeply personal, and very funny. As difficult as her agoraphobia is to manage, she's pulled through it beautifully. Agorafabulous! manages to make you laugh even as she's peeing into cereal bowls and hiding them under her bed." -- Rob Delaney, comedian and columnist, Vice magazine "With storytelling that is hilarious, honest, raw, and absurd, Agorafabulous! puts you in the body and mind of an extraordinary individual who accepts and embraces her full self." -- Baratunde Thurston, author of How to Be Black "Sara's blunt and quirkily humorous take on the crippling anxiety that held her hostage in her own home will have you laughing out loud one minute and wanting to hug her the next." -- Kambri Crews, author of Burn Down the Ground: A Memoir "The abridged list of things Sara Benincasa has been afraid of includes leaving her home, having a wet head, driving...and sex. But her memoir...dissects all of these fears with so much verve and humor, you'll be amazed at how much fun it can be to read about such difficult circumstances." -- Bust Magazine "Benincasa informs and entertains while relaying this story about mental illness. Without glossing over the seriousness of her ordeal, she mines it for laughter, which, someone once said, is the best medicine." -- Penthouse "Often poignant and always funny... [Sara Benincasa's] matter-of-fact, unselfconscious delivery allows readers to be entertained without having to feel guilty about it; further, it may just inspire them to make a few changes of their own. [A] story of triumph over adversity...you'll be better for having read it." -- Examiner.com

She is utterly hilarious (NewYorkTimes.com) and delightfully loopy (ChicagoTribune.com). But comedian and radio host Sara Benincasa's life hasn't always been a funny joyride. Since childhood, she struggled with panic disorder, becoming by age twenty-one a full-on obsessive, cowering, trembling agoraphobe. Terrified to leave her own apartment, she stacked empty cans and jars against the wall of her tiny studio apartment. Her fear eventually extended to everything but her bed. Afraid of even the sink, she began using cereal bowls as toilets. And always there was the siren song of the knives in the kitchen drawer, luring her to give herself over to emptiness. As she neared the edge, friends and family, therapy and drugs intervened to help Sara build a new world from the ashes of her former life. Today, the acclaimed artist tours the world - a life inconceivable to the frightened, stick-thin young woman crouching in the dark whom she once was. "Agorafabulous!" is her funny, unpretentious recollections of being a prisoner of fear and how she struggled to overcome her demons. Earthy and relatable, unabashedly incorrect and unsentimental, she will break your heart in one sentence and leave you hunched over with laughter in the next (Sam Apple, author of "American Parent").