Dave Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up in suburban Lake Forest
and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is married to
the writer Vendela Vida (author of Girls on the Verge, And Now You Can
Go, and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name). They live in
San Francisco with their daughter, October Adelaide Eggers Vida, born in October
2005.
Eggers began writing as a Salon.com editor and founded Might magazine, while
also writing a comic strip called Smarter Feller (originally Swell, then Smart
Feller) for SF Weekly. His first book was a memoir (with fictional elements),
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). It focuses on the author's
struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco following the sudden
deaths of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
Egger's sister, Beth, a lawyer in Modesto, California, claimed that Eggers
grossly understated her role in raising their brother Toph and made use of her
journals in writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius without
compensating her, but later withdraw her claims. She committed suicide in
2002.
In 2002, Eggers published his first 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 and retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity for its
Vintage imprint distribution. He has edited many anthologies (mostly the
Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short
stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics that first published
in 2002) and in 2006 published his second novel, What Is the What: The
Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, which was a finalist for the 2006
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
He is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house that publishes
a number of books and literary journals including McSweeney's Quarterly (since
1998), a monthly journal, The Believer, since 2003 which is edited by Vendela
Vida; and a quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin, since 2005.
Eggers currently teaches writing in San Francisco at 826 Valencia, a nonprofit
tutoring center and writing school for children that he cofounded with Vendela
Vida in 2002. They have recruited volunteers to operate similar programs in Los
Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, all under the
auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National.
In September 2007, the Heinz Foundations awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz award
given to recognize "extraordinary achievements by individuals". The award will
be used to fund some of the 826 Valencia writing centers. In 2008 he was
the recipient of a TED Prize.
Bibligraphy
Nonfiction
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of
America's Teachers (co-authored with Daniel Moulthrop and Nínive
Clements Calegari) (2005)
Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
(co-compiled with Lola Vollen; with an introduction by Scott Turow) (2005)
Fiction
You Shall Know Our Velocity (novel, 2002)
Sacrament (novel, revised and expanded version of You Shall
Know Our Velocity (2003)
The Unforbidden is Compulsory; or, Optimism (story, 2004)
How We Are Hungry (short stories, 2004)
Short Short Stories (short stories, (2005)
What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
(novel, 2006)
How the Water Feels to the Fishes (short stories; part of One
Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box, 2007)
The Wild Things (working title) - a novel inspired by Where
the Wild Things Are, to be released alongside the film, 2009)
Anthologies edited
The Best American Nonrequired Reading (annual volume publishing
most years since 2002)
The Burned Children of America (2003, with Zadie Smith)
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales: Comics Issue
(2004. with Chris Ware)
Best of McSweeney's Volume 1 (2004) and Volume 2 (2005)
Created in Darkness By Troubled Americans: The Best of Mcsweeney's,
Humor Category: 1998-2003 (2004)
The Small Box of Short Stories (2007, with Sarah Manguso and Deb
Olin Unferth)
This biography was last updated on 03/20/2008.
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