Dave Eggers


Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. His 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights non-profit organisation Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The [New York Times Magazine].
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Early life

Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in a family with three siblings. His father, John K. Eggers, was an attorney, and his mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers, was a schoolteacher. The family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, where Eggers attended public high school and was a classmate of actor Vince Vaughn.
Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign to earn a degree in journalism. However, his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both parents: his father in 1991 and his mother in 1992. These events were later chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At age 21, Eggers took responsibility for his younger brother, Christopher, and moved to Berkeley, California. His elder brother, William D. Eggers, is a researcher who has worked for several conservative think tanks, promoting privatization. Eggers's sister Beth died by suicide in November 2001.

Career

Eggers began writing as a Salon.com editor and founded Might magazine in San Francisco in 1994 with David Moodie and Marny Requa, while also writing a comic strip called Smarter Feller for SF Weekly.
Might evolved out of the small San Francisco-based independent paper Cups, and gathered a loyal following with its irreverent humor and quirky approach to the issues and personalities of the day. An article purporting to be an obituary of former 1980s child star Adam Rich garnered some national attention. The magazine regularly included humor pieces, and several essays and nonfiction pieces by seminal writers of the 1990s, including "Impediments to Passion", an essay on sex in the AIDS era by David Foster Wallace.
Eggers later recounted in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that the magazine struggled to profit and stopped publication in 1997. An anthology of the best of Might magazine's brief run, Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp' and Other Essays from Might Magazine, was published in late 1998. By this time, Eggers was freelancing for Esquire and continuing to work for Salon.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, published in 2000, is Eggers's first book, a memoir with fictional elements, and it focuses on his struggle to raise his younger brother in the San Francisco Bay Area following the deaths of both of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The memoir was praised for its originality, idiosyncratic self-referencing, and several innovative stylistic elements. Early printings of the 2001 trade-paperback edition were published with a lengthy postscript entitled, Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.
In 2002, Eggers published his second novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. An expanded and revised version was released as Sacrament in 2003. A version without the new material in Sacrament was created and retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity! for a Vintage imprint distribution. He has since published How We Are Hungry, a collection of short stories, and three politically themed serials for Salon.
In November 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, a book of interviews with former prisoners sentenced to death and later exonerated. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, a specialist in the aftermath of prominent human rights abuses and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies.
Eggers' 2006 novel What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Eggers also edits the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.
Eggers was one of the original contributors to ESPN The Magazine and helped create its section "The Jump". He also acted as the first anonymous "Answer Guy", a column that continued to run after he stopped working for the publication.
On November 7, 2009, he was presented with the "Courage in Media" Award by the Council on American–Islamic Relations for his book Zeitoun. Zeitoun was optioned by Jonathan Demme, who considered an animated film-rendition of the work. To Demme, it "felt like the first in-depth immersion I'd ever had through literature or film into the Muslim-American family. ... The moral was that they are like people of any other faith, and I hope our film, if we can get it made, will also be like that." Demme, quoted in early 2011, expressed confidence that when the script was finished, he would be able to find financing, perhaps even from a major studio. However, in May 2014, The Playlist reported that the film was "percolat in development". Demme died in April 2017, and the project has not been heard of since.
In the early 2010s, after six years without publishing substantive literary fiction following What is the What, Eggers began a three-year streak of back-to-back novels, each broadly concerned with pressing social and political issues facing the United States and the world in the twenty-first century. Eggers published his novel of the Great Recession and the 2008 financial crisis, A Hologram for the King, in July 2012. In October of that year, the novel was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
Eggers followed this with The Circle, which was released in October 2013. The novel tells the story of a young employee at a fictional technology company based in San Francisco. As she navigates her job, she begins to doubt her career due to the company's seemingly benevolent innovations, ultimately revealing a more sinister underlying agenda. Completing the productive spell, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? was published in June 2014. In November 2015, Your Fathers, Where Are They? ... was longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award, Eggers's fifth nomination for the award following earlier nominations for The Circle, A Hologram for the King, The Wild Things, and What is the What.
In April 2016, Eggers visited Israel as part of a project by Breaking the Silence to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation and the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman and published under the title Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation in June 2017.
In July 2016, Eggers published Heroes of the Frontier. Earlier the same year, a film adaptation of Eggers's earlier novel A Hologram for the King was released to mixed reviews and middling commercial performance. The Circle, a film version of Eggers's book, starring Emma Watson, John Boyega, and Tom Hanks, was released in April 2017. Eggers followed Heroes of the Frontier with The Monk of Mokha, another nonfiction biography in a similar vein to Zeitoun, billed by the publishers as "the exhilarating true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war."
Eggers ended the decade by publishing two stylistically different novellas written concurrently. The Parade, published by Knopf in March 2019, was a spare, minimalist novella reflecting Eggers's long-standing concerns with humanitarian issues, global development, and Western perceptions of the developing world. According to the advance blurb from the publisher, the novel concerns "two men, Western contractors sent to work far from home, tasked with paving a road to the capital in a dangerous and largely lawless country." Reviews were mixed: Positive notices included Andrew Motion's writing in The Guardian that " novel may be sternly reduced in terms of its cast and language, but this leanness doesn't diminish the strength of its argument", and Ron Charles in The Washington Post wrote that The Parade is "a story that conforms to the West's reductive attitudes about the developing world. Writers and politicians have long generalized about those individual cultures. A novel that lumps them together into a nameless, primitive nation only plays into that tendency."
The Parade was followed in November 2019 by another short novella, The Captain and the Glory, billed by Eggers himself as an "allegorical satire" of the Trump administration. In an interview with the publishers Knopf published on the McSweeney's website, Eggers described the novel as "an attempt to understand this era by painting it in the gaudy and garish colors it really deserves... This is part farce, part parable, and I do hope, though the Captain bears more than a passing resemblance to Trump, that the book will be readable when Trump is gone. That's part of the reason I called it 'An entertainment' on the title page. It's a nod to Graham Greene but also the way I hope people will read it. It was cathartic to write, and I hope cathartic to read." As with The Parade, reviews were decidedly mixed, with much criticism noting that Eggers's satire struggled to keep up with or do justice to the events of the Trump era. In a review for the Financial Times, Carl Wilkinson expressed bemusement about the purpose of the book and its intentions, Hannah Barekat in The Spectator was critical of the "heavy handed" nature of the book's satire, and The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and Kirkus Reviews also found the book wanting.
In 2021, his novella The Museum of Rain was published, and according to the McSweeney's website, the "elegiac" short story concerns "an American Army vet in his 70s who is asked to lead a group of young grand-nieces and grand-nephews on a walk through the hills of California's Central Coast. Walking toward a setting sun, their destination is The Museum of Rain, which may or may not still exist, and whose origin and meaning are elusive to all." The novel The Every was released in October 2021 as a follow-up to his 2013 novel The Circle.

McSweeney's and other ventures

Eggers is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house known for its literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which he began in 1998. McSweeney's also publishes The Believer, a monthly journal edited by Eggers's wife, Vendela Vida, and the now-defunct DVD magazine Wholphin.
In addition to his literary pursuits, Eggers is a dedicated philanthropist. In 2002, he and educator Nínive Clements Calegari co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for children and young adults. The project has since expanded into a national organization, 826 National, with chapters in cities across the United States. In April 2010, under the umbrella of 826 National, Eggers launched ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with students to make college more affordable.
In 2006, he appeared at fundraising events, dubbed the Revenge of the Book–Eaters tour, to support these programs.
In September 2007, the Heinz Family Foundation awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. In accordance with Eggers's wishes, the award money was given to 826 National and The Teacher Salary Project.

Visual art work

While at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Eggers attended art classes. After the publication of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he focused mainly on writing. Still, he publicly returned to visual art in 2010, with a solo gallery show at Electric Works in San Francisco, called "It Is Right to Draw Their Fur". The show featured many drawings of animals often paired with phrases, sometimes out of the Bible. In conjunction with that exhibition, McSweeney's published a catalog featuring 25 loose-leaf prints of the work featured in the show. In 2015, Eggers had his first solo museum exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art called "The Insufferable Throne of God". Eggers is represented by Electric Works, a fine art gallery in San Francisco.
Outside of exhibitions, Eggers' visual art contributions include the following:
  • Provided album art for Austin rock group Paul Banks & the Carousels' album Yelling at the Sun.
  • Designed the artwork for Thrice's album Vheissu.

Other

Ahead of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Eggers wrote an essay about the U.S. national team and soccer in the United States for The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, which contained essays about each competing team in the tournament and was published with aid from the journal Granta. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, Eggers was rumored to be a possible candidate to be the new editor of The Paris Review before the Review selected Lorin Stein.

Activism

Eggers's book The Every was released in 2021, but he refused to sell the hardcover edition on Amazon, limiting the release to independent bookstores only. Since its release, paperback editions of The Every have been available on Amazon.
In 2022, Eggers's books were among several titles banned in South Dakota schools because of sexual content. Eggers went to South Dakota to speak to authorities and students and offered any student who wanted one of the banned books a copy for free via his website.
In December 2022, Eggers traveled on behalf of PEN America to Kyiv, Ukraine. He published "The Profound Defiance of Daily Life in Kyiv" in The New Yorker based on his time in the war-torn country.
In May 2025, Eggers published a short story entitled Uncle Patrick's Secessionist Breakfast calling on California to secede from the USA and become an independent country. Eggers contends in the story that the new California wouldn't need a military to defend itself as Russia would never attack a member of NATO and China would never attack a Western nation.

Personal life

Eggers lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Vendela Vida, who is also a writer. The two met at a wedding in San Francisco in 1998 and married in 2003. They have two children together. Eggers was the primary guardian of his youngest brother, Toph, with whom he co-authored children's books.

Awards and recognition

Eggers has won numerous annual awards for specific works as well as lifetime achievement awards. He also received an honorary doctorate degree.

2000s

2010s

2020s

Works

Fiction

Novels

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Short stories

Collections
  • The Forgetters series
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Children's fiction

  • The Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance series
Eggers and his brother, Christopher, authored this series using the joint pseudonym Benny and Doris Haggis-on-Whey.
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Nonfiction

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Photobooks

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Works edited/prefaced/contributed

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Voice of Witness series

, founded by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen, is a non-profit organization that uses oral history to illuminate contemporary human rights crises in the U.S. and around the world through an oral history book series and an education program. M.D. Mimi Lok joined in 2008 as Executive Director & Executive Editor.
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Film contributions

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Music contributions

  • Eggers can be heard talking with Spike Jonze during "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton", the final track on Beck's 2006 album The Information. The third section of the track features Eggers and Jonze responding to Beck's question, "What would the ultimate record that ever could possibly be made sound like?"
  • Eggers contributed lyrics to the song "The Ghost of Rita Gonzolo" on One Ring Zero's album As Smart as We Are.
  • Eggers wrote the lyrics for the song "" for his project 30 Days, 30 Songs with music by Guster's Ryan Miller.

Criticism and interpretation

  • Altes, Liesbeth Korthals "Sincerity, Reliability, and Other Ironies — Notes on Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Boxall, Peter. Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • D'Amore, Jonathan. American Authorship and Autobiographical Narrative: Mailer, Wideman, Eggers. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
  • den Dulk, Allard. Existentialist Engagement in Wallace, Eggers and Foer. Bloomsbury, 2014.
  • Funk, Wolfgang. The Literature of Reconstruction: American Literature in the New Millennium. Bloomsbury. 2015
  • Galow, Timothy W. Understanding Dave Eggers. University of South Carolina Press. 2014.
  • Giles, Paul. The Global Remapping of American Literature. Princeton University Press, 2011
  • Grassian, Daniel. Hybrid Fictions: American Literature and Generation X. McFarland, 2003
  • Hamilton, Caroline D. "Blank Looks: Reality TV and Memoir in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol.28, no.2., pp.31-46
  • Hamilton, Caroline D. One Man Zeitgeist: Dave Eggers, Publishing and Publicity. Bloomsbury, 2012.
  • Holland, Mark K. Succeeding Postmodernism: Language and Humanism in Contemporary American Literature. Bloomsbury, 2013.
  • Jensen, Mikkel "A Note on a Title: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in The Explicator. Volume 72, Issue 2.
  • Mosseau, Robert. "Connecting Travel Writing, Bildungsroman, and Therapeutic Culture in Dave Eggers's Literature" in Lanzendorfer, Tim The Poetics of Genre in the Contemporary Novel. Lexington Books, 2015.
  • Nicol, Bran "'The Memoir as Self-Destruction': Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in Modern Confessional Writing. New York: Routledge.
  • Peek, Michelle. "Humanitarian Narrative and Posthumanist Critique: Dave Eggers's What is the What. Biography. 35.1, pp.115-136.
  • Pignagnoli, Virginia. "Sincerity, Sharing, and Authorial Discourses on the Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction: The Case of Dave Eggers's You Shall Know Our Velocity" in Lanzendorfer, Tim The Poetics of Genre in the Contemporary Novel. Lexington Books, 2015.
  • Sommerfeld, Stephanie. "Nature Revisited: Postironic Sublimity in Dave Eggers" in Pierce, Gillian B. The Sublime Today: Contemporary Readings in the Aesthetic. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 67–101.
  • Timmer, Nicoline. Do You Feel it Too? The Post-Postmodern Syndrome in American Fiction at the Turn of the Millennium. Rodopi, 2010.
  • Varvogli, Aliki. Travel and Dislocation in Contemporary American Fiction. Routledge, 2012.