The Office is managing to survive without Steve Carell; the same might not be true if NBC lost Mindy Kaling, the phenomenally funny actress who plays the series’ egomaniacal, airheaded customer service rep Kelly Kapoor. Kaling, who’s been writing for the show since she was 24 (she now also directs episodes), recently authored Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns) (Crown, $25), which details her transformation from elementary-school fat kid to adorable and famous comedienne. The book is an inside look at Kaling’s love life (two back-to-back chapters are called “Someone Explain One-Night Stands to Me” and “’Hooking Up’ Is Confusing”), her hobbies (“With the exception of Japanese businessmen, no one likes karaoke more than I do”), and her now-legendary Twitter feed, @mindykaling. (A recent tweet: “Can everyone buy my book please? I wanna quit the business and home-school my kids real weird”). Also mentioned are her Office co-stars, including the Shoreline-raised “frenemy” with whom she appears at tonight’s Rainn Wilson and Friends comedy benefit show for The Mona Foundation, a Seattle-based educational nonprofit for women and girls worldwide. “Seattle is Twilight country!” Kaling recently tweeted at Wilson. “Also hoping to do a book thing earlier that day. Seattle loves brainy things, Frasier taught me.” Other Wilson Friends appearing tonight include Phoenix Jones, the former SW cover story subject who helped inspire Wilson’s movie Super; Chris Pratt (who grew up in Lake Stevens), the lovably oafish Mouse Rat frontman Andy Dwyer on The Office‘s sister show, Parks & Recreation; and Pratt’s real-life wife, Anna Faris (who grew up in Edmonds), who should demand that Kaling write her next movie. And co-star in it, of course. ERIN K. THOMPSON

Sat., Nov. 19, 8 p.m., 2011