Given the nickname "Family Liar" by her father around the time she started talking, Sarah Thyre was the second of five children to be born into a southern family of Roman Catholics. Confused by this endearment, but eager to live up to it, Sarah quickly managed to get herself into precarious situations. Whether it is small Sarah accidentally going "poddy" in the garage during a game of hide-and-seek, medium-sized Sarah surviving a fishing trip with her volatile father, or full-sized Sarah unwittingly stealing a car from her boyfriend's employer, grown-up Sarah shares each story with self-effacing sincerity and a seemingly invincible sense of humor.

Cara Seitchek: The voice in your memoir captures the tone and cadences of a child and teenager. How difficult or easy was it for you to capture this voice? Was this voice a deliberate choice or did this evolve as you wrote the memoir?

Sarah Thyre: Though not really a "choice," it was certainly deliberate. That voice is fairly easy to access, especially the teen voice. The part of me that reads Us Weekly is the same part of me that went through my high school yearbook writing snarky captions under everyone's picture. The schadenfreude part! When writing the earlier chapters, I was concerned that I come off as hateful of everything and everyone, especially Southerners, but I had to trust that the reader would see it was my defense mechanism as a child, and not indicative of how I feel today. I believe there is a progression in the tone of the book from a smart-alecky, unconsciously superior child's voice to that of a teenager who is slowly becoming self-conscious. I think the shift happens somewhere around the time of my parents' divorce. When my dad moved out, it freed me from daily fear of bodily harm, but then came the soul-crushing reality of increasing poverty.

CS: Is your memoir written entirely from memory or did you use a diary or interviews with friends and family members as prompts for some of the events recounted?

ST: In spite of our transient lifestyle and my mother's tendency to throw things out that appall her, I still have most of my childhood diaries and journals. A few years' back, Mom mailed me a bunch of big Ziploc bags full of things like my student council presidential gavel (rusted), locks of hair from my first haircut; and my baby book, which I quote from in Dark at the Roots. I didn't look through the journals because they are filled with fantasy-driven writing, like the floor plans for the castle I would be sharing with Simon Le Bon, the lead singer of Duran Duran. We would have three Jacuzzis and two pools - one outdoor, one indoor. I didn't interview anyone other than checking in with a sibling or two for confirmation on the details. For example, when I was writing about going to Disney World and not finding a hotel room to stay in our first night, my sister Becky reminded me that we slept in the back of the station wagon while my parents sat in the front seat swigging bourbon.

CS: The tone of the book is reminiscent of David Sedaris. Was his writing an influence on yours?

ST: Of course I love David's writing. My older sister is an actress and lived in Chicago and New York in the late 80s and early 90s, when David used to read from his journals at open mic nights. She would send me clippings from New York Press of what would become the Santaland Diaries. When I moved to New York in 1994, I had the good fortune to do a few plays with David Sedaris and his sister Amy. The lines they wrote for me are, to date, the funnest and funniest characters I've ever performed. Characters like Briggs: a gigantic, Ma Kettle-ish woman who sang like Eartha Kitt, or a munchkin-voiced cricket that's been burned in a fire. I like to say my book is about "the food chain of humiliation" and I think David's ability to find humor in squirmingly embarrassing situations was an inspiration for me. A literary agent once told me that everyone was looking for "the next David Sedaris." It was strange to hear that about someone I know, but he's definitely an icon for people who write memoir and personal essay, and I'm no exception.

CS: In your author’s note, you mention that names have been changed and that some characters are composites. How did you decide who to make into a composite, whose name to change – what process did you use in creating and incorporating the characters?

ST: The instances of composite characters are few. Mainly, I did it for narrative expedience. If three people said four things, I compressed it to two people saying two things each. The main reason I changed most of the names is of course, legal. I didn't ask anyone's permission to write about them, so changing the names made sense. I certainly had no desire to injure anyone's reputation. One of my sisters wanted her name changed in case she runs for office some day. I pointed out to her that she was under 18 in the book, a juvenile, and anything she did couldn't be held against her, and besides, she didn't do anything illegal! I changed her name anyway, to make her happy.

CS: Your book takes the reader to when you are 18 years old. Do you plan to write a sequel about your later life or do you plan to stop with recounting your childhood?

ST: I over-wrote the book. We hacked off several chapters because the tone changed again, once I moved out and went to college. So I've got the seed for another memoir... oh, and some other ideas I won't discuss because it might jinx them!

CS: The cover of your book is very striking, and relates well to the book’s content. How much input did you have on cover choice?

ST: The cover is a photo of a child mannequin that Nicole Caputo, Counterpoint's jacket designer, bought on eBay a while ago and had been dying to use somehow, somewhere. My book came along and voila! - synergy. Nicole slapped an adult bouffant-style wig on the mannequin. The photographer shot it with various configurations of arms and broken fingers, and I had input over which shot they used. I wanted the chips in the forehead to be highly visible, and the broken fingers to appear on the back cover, not the front. I love the blue-sky color Nicole chose for the background.

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Sarah Thyre is an actress, comedienne, and writer who has performed on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” “Strangers with Candy,” “Upright Citizens Brigade,” and “TV Funhouse.” She has written and performed her own work on National Public Radio, freshyarn.com, live onstage at New York’s Luna Lounge, UCB Theatre, L.A.’s Comedy Central Stage, and ImprovOlympic. Her acting credits include “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” as well as plays by Amy and David Sedaris, including the Obie-winning One Woman Shoe and Lincoln Center’s Incident at Cobbler’s Knob. For many years, she also published her own humor ’zine, “Thyrezine.” She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and child.