Fully Baked

An astonishingly candid memoir that will make you laugh and cry while it steals your heart, from a renowned stand-up comedian and veteran SNL writer who is “an expert in making light of life’s most devastating moments” (Rolling Stone). Rosebud Baker grew up as a loudmouth who preferred to be honest than polite, which is another way of saying she was unemployable. She spent her twenties trying to make it as an actor in New York like every other privileged millennial transplant cosplaying Rent, while gigging as a barista and as "the world’s angriest yoga instructor." She was blackout drunk most of the time. She even tried to steal a bodega cat. Eventually, she harnessed the qualities she once saw as defects—her dark humor and insistence on saying the awkward thing out loud—into a comedy career. She got sober. And she went from dating NYC’s most emotionally unavailable artists to falling in love, getting married, and having a daughter. Fully Baked is Rosebud’s riotously funny and emotionally resonant memoir. Inspired by her pregnancy and early motherhood, it’s also her quest to discover who she really is and how she wants to raise her kid. Every chapter is smart, self-deprecating, and laugh-out-loud funny, and no subject is off limits, from her famous yet unknowable grandfather, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, to her youngest sister’s sudden death. You’ll speed through the pages to discover what happens next. Then, you'll look back on a remarkable book that felt like an intimate conversation with a friend who made you feel better by confessing all the ways they screwed up. After working her way through open mic sets and low-level road gigs, another unexpected bonus emerged: she was pulled out of the bleak New York City dating pool and into the orbit of her future husband, fellow comedian Andy Haynes. With his unwavering love, the idea of becoming a mother—which had previously seemed far-fetched and mutually exclusive with career success—became something Rosebud suddenly wanted. This raw and riotously funny memoir feels like an intimate conversation with a friend who starts every story with, “This might be TMI, but…” Laced with her signature dark humor, it will take you on a journey from Capitol Hill to comedy clubs, from her grandfather’s Texas home to the SNL writer’s room. With wit and honesty, Rosebud reckons with her identity as a daughter, sister, alcoholic, comedian, and mother. By laying down her years of heartache and humor, and showing how she arrived at her own version of a happy ending, she’s written one of the most unforgettable (and laugh-out-loud) memoirs of the year.