return to home
 
 
Member Login
Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile facebook      twitter      Bookmark and Share      mail to a friend  Email
 
  This Week's Recommendations    |     Hardcovers Coming Soon    |     Paperbacks Coming Soon    |     Recent Hardcovers    |     Recent Paperbacks
   Genres   |    Settings   |    Time Periods   |    Themes   |    Favorites   |    Award Winners   |    Book Finder   |    Surprise Me!   |    Tag cloud
   Recent Interviews    |     All Interviews    |     Author Bios    |     Author Websites    |     Pronunciation Guide
   Free Newsletters   |    Wordplay   |    Book Giveaway   |    BookBrowse Polls   |    Literary Quotes   |    Personality Quiz   |    Gift Membership
   Recent Membership Magazines    |     Magazine Archives     |     Invite the Author    |     My Reading List    |     First Impressions    |     My Account
   Editor's Blog    |     Best Reader Reviews    |     Book News    |     Meet the Reviewers    |     Stay In Touch
   About Us   |    Tour   |    Member Benefits   |    Join   |    Gift Memberships   |    Library Subscriptions   |    FAQ   |    People Say   |    Contact Us
PLA 2010
Search BookBrowse
Suggested Links
Books by this Author:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)


Other Links:
Free Twice-Monthly Newsletters
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
A Saint on Death Row

Win This Book!




The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Now a Major Motion Picture

Enter To Win Now!


wordplay
Solve this clue:
"T S I Willing B T F I W"

and be entered to win....
New Author
Interviews
Ingrid Law
Ingrid Law talks about the inspiration for Savvy
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
John Hart
In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
No Stars
   Author Biography

Browse a biography of Dave Eggers.
Plus: Book summary, excerpts and reviews at BookBrowse.com.

Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers Books by this author at BookBrowse:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Link to Author's Website
Biography

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.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date, inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new.

Become a Member
Advertisement
Editor's Choice
  •  Mar 18 
  •  Mar 16 
  •  Mar 14 
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand Jacket You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress
Sarah Blake
The Postmistress Jacket The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during war­time, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Heresy
S.J. Parris
Heresy Jacket Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
The Swan Thieves
Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves Jacket Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God
Rebecca Goldstein
36 Arguments for the Existence of God Jacket A hilarious, heartbreaking, and intellectually captivating novel about the rapture and torments of religious experience in all its variety.
Wedlock
Recent Reader Reviews
Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien
I read this book in two days and found it so refreshing. Although you will learn a great deal about barn owls by reading it, the book is not just ... read more
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I enjoyed reading this book, however, feel that this is not completely her own ideas. This books remembers me of a cross between 'ghost','Sixth ... read more
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Brooklyn Bridge
Karen Hesse
2. Three Cups of Tea
David O. Relin, Greg Mortenson
3. The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
4. The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
John Boyne
More...
Book Club Recommendations
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Paperback (Feb/10)
Lowboy
by John Wray
Paperback (Feb/10)
Honolulu
by Alan Brennert
Paperback (Feb/10)
When Will There Be Good News?
by Kate Atkinson
Paperback (Jan/10)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
by Heidi W. Durrow
4.5 Stars            (Feb/10)
Still Life
by Melissa Milgrom
3.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
The Queen's Lover
by Vanora Bennett
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
The Journal Keeper
by Phyllis Theroux
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Arcadia Falls
by Carol Goodman
Four Stars            (Mar/10)
More...
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Author as Advocate
The Story Behind "The Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak
A Warm Welcome to Major Pettigrew
How Becoming Published Changed My Life (in ways I did not expect)
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
  Latest BookBrowse News
Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound (Mar 18 2010)
Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't... Full Story
Amazon's e-pricing threats (Mar 18 2010)
With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Did your parents/caregivers read to you regularly as a child? If so, how old were you when they stopped?
Younger than 5 years old
Around 5-7 years old
8-10 years old
11-13 years old
14 years or older
They never or rarely read to me
I don't remember
HOME Submissions | Advertising | Showcase | Library Subscriptions | Media Inquiries | Reviewers | Contact Us |   Email this page to a friend
addall.com - external link
Visit AddAll.com to compare and save at 41 bookstores!
Searching for used books? Search 20,000+ dealers!
 
Compare music prices  |  Compare movie prices
One Percent