Dave Eggers facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dave Eggers
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Eggers in 2018
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| Born | March 12, 1970 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
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| Education | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign |
| Period | 1993–present |
| Literary movement | Postmodern literature, post-postmodern, new sincerity |
| Spouse | Vendela Vida |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | William D. Eggers (brother) Constance Demby (aunt) |
Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal; a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness; and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
Contents
Early life and education
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father, John K. Eggers (1936–1991), was an attorney, while his mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), was a school teacher. His father was Protestant and his mother was Catholic. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago, where he attended public high school and was a classmate of actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers's elder brother, William D. Eggers, is a researcher who has worked for several conservative think tanks, doing research promoting privatization. Eggers's sister Beth died in November 2001. Eggers briefly spoke about his sister's death during a 2002 fan interview for McSweeney's.
Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism. However, his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents: his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cancer. These events were chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the time, Eggers was age 21, and his youngest sibling, Christopher ("Toph"), was 8 years old. The two elder siblings, William and Beth, were unable to commit to caring for Toph; his oldest sibling, William, had a full-time job and his next-oldest sibling, Beth, was enrolled in law school. As a result, Eggers took responsibility. He left the University of Illinois and moved to Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend Kirsten and his brother. They initially moved in with Eggers' sibling, Beth, and her roommate, but eventually found a place in another part of town, which they paid for with money left to them by their parents. Toph attended a small private school, and Eggers did temp work and freelance graphic design for a local newspaper.
Eventually, with his friend David Moodie, Eggers took over a local free newspaper called Cups. This gradually evolved into the satirical magazine Might.
Literary work
1990s
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 (originally Swell) 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 (originally intended to be Back to the Future star Crispin Glover until Glover backed out) garnered some national attention. The magazine regularly included humour pieces, and a number of essays and non-fiction pieces by seminal writers of the 1990s, including "Impediments to Passion".
As Eggers later recounted in his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the magazine consistently struggled to make a profit, and finally ceased 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 magazine and continuing to work for Salon.
2000s
Eggers's first book was a memoir with fictional elements, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), which focused 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 Non-Fiction. The memoir was praised for its originality, idiosyncratic self-referencing, and for 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 first fully fictional 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 a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, and three politically themed serials for Salon.com.
In November 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, a specialist in the aftermath of major human rights abuses and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies.
Eggers's 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[ing] in development". Demme died in April 2017, and the project has not been heard of since.
2010s
In the early 2010s, after going 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 wider world in the twenty-first century. Eggers published his novel of the Great Recession and late 2000s 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, released in October 2013, and depicting the life of a young worker at a fictional San Francisco-based technology company in the near future, as she faces doubts about her vocation, due to the company's seemingly well-intentioned innovations revealing a more sinister underlying agenda. Completing the productive spell, a new novel concerning anxiety with America's place in the world, 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' 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 the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and was published under the title "Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation", in June 2017.
In July 2016, Eggers published his sixth novel, Heroes of the Frontier. Earlier the same year, a film adaptation of Eggers' earlier novel A Hologram for the King was released, to mixed reviews and middling commercial performance. The Circle, a film version of Eggers' book, starring Emma Watson, John Boyega, and Tom Hanks (who had starred in the Hologram for the King adaptation), was released in April 2017. Eggers followed Heroes of the Frontier with The Monk of Mokha (2018), 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 very stylistically different novellas, written concurrently with each other. The Parade, published by Knopf in March 2019, was a spare, minimalist novella reflecting Eggers' 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 writing in The Guardian that "[Eggers'] novel may be sternly reduced in terms of its cast and language, but this leanness doesn't diminish the strength of its argument", while Ron Charles in The Washington Post demurred 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' 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, while The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and Kirkus Reviews also found the book wanting.
2020s
Eggers returned to the literary fold in 2021 with two new works of literary fiction. A short novella, The Museum of Rain, was published in 2021, 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 a place called The Museum of Rain, which may or may not still exist, and whose origin and meaning are elusive to all." Eggers' next novel, The Every, was released in October 2021. The novel is a follow-up to his 2013 novel The Circle.
McSweeney's
Eggers founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house, named for his mother's maiden name. The publishing house produces a quarterly literary journal, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, first published in 1998; a monthly journal, The Believer, which debuted in 2003 and is edited by Eggers's wife, Vendela Vida; and, from 2005 to 2012, a quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. Other works include The Future Dictionary of America, Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans, and "Dr. and Mr. Haggis-On-Whey", the last being a series of children's books of literary nonsense, which Eggers writes with his younger brother Toph Eggers under a pseudonym.
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.
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, but publicly returned to visual art with a solo gallery show at Electric Works, San Francisco, in 2010, 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.
826 National
In 2002, Eggers and educator Nínive Clements Calegari co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids ages 6–18 in San Francisco. It has since grown into six chapters across the United States: Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Washington, D.C., and Boston, all under the auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National.
In 2006, he appeared at a series of fund-raising events, dubbed the Revenge of the Book–Eaters tour, to support these programs. The Chicago show, at the Park West theatre, featured Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard. Other performers on the tour included Sufjan Stevens, Jon Stewart, Davy Rothbart, and David Byrne. In September 2007, the Heinz Family Foundation awarded Eggers a $250,000 Heinz Award (given to recognize "extraordinary achievements by individuals") in the Arts and Humanities. In accordance with Eggers's wishes, the award money was given to 826 National and The Teacher Salary Project.
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.
Musical 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 (2004).
Personal life
Eggers was the primary guardian of his youngest brother Toph Eggers and they later co-authored children's books together. Eggers lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is married to Vendela Vida, also a writer. The couple have two children. Vida and Eggers had met in 1998 in San Francisco at a wedding and started dating in 1999.
He was one of three 2008 TED Prize recipients. His TED Prize wish was for helping community members to personally engage with local public schools. The same year, he was named one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World" by Utne Reader.
Awards and honors
- 2000 Time Best Book of the Year, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2000 Washington Post Best Book of the Year, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2000 San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2000 Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2000 The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction finalist, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- 2001 Addison Metcalfe Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
- 2003 Independent Book Award, You Shall Know Our Velocity
- 2005 Named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People
- 2005 Honorary Doctor of Letters from Brown University. He delivered the baccalaureate address at the school in 2008.
- 2006 Salon Book Award for What is the What
- 2007 The 13th Annual Heinz Award (Arts and Humanities)
- 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction) finalist, What is the What
- 2008 TED Prize
- 2008 International Dublin Literary Award longlist, What is the What
- 2009 Literarian Award of the National Book Award
- 2009 Prix Médicis award, What is the What
- 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Current Interest), Zeitoun
- 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Innovator's Award)
- 2009 Entertainment Weekly "End-of-the-Decade" Best of list, Zeitoun
- 2010 American Book Award, Zeitoun
- 2010 Northern California Book Award (Creative Nonfiction) nomination, Zeitoun
- 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Zeitoun
- 2011 International Dublin Literary Award longlist, The Wild Things
- 2012 National Book Award (Fiction) finalist, A Hologram for the King
- 2012 A Hologram for the King named in the 10 Best Books of 2012 list by editors of The New York Times Book Review
- 2012 A Hologram for the King included in Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2012 list
- 2012 Commonwealth Club Inforum's 21st Century Award
- 2012 Hollywood.com Best Books of 2012 list, A Hologram for the King
- 2012 Albatros Literaturpreis for Zeitoun, co-won with German translators Ulrike Wasel and Klaus Timmermann.
- 2012 The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2012 List (Fiction & Poetry), A Hologram for the King
- 2012 The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2012 list (Fiction, chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review), A Hologram for the King
- 2012 PEN Center USA Award of Honor 2012
- 2013 Eggers was the 2013 recipient of Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Social Progress category
- 2013 California Book Award (Fiction) finalist, A Hologram for the King
- 2014 International Dublin Literary Award longlist, A Hologram for the King
- 2015 International Dublin Literary Award longlist, The Circle
- 2015 Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2018 International Dublin Literary Award shortlist, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?
Filmography
- Away We Go (2009), screenplay co-written with wife Vendela Vida
- Where the Wild Things Are (2009), screenplay co-written with director Spike Jonze
- Promised Land (2012), screenplay by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, story by Dave Eggers
- A Hologram for the King (2016), film directed by Tom Tykwer, based on novel A Hologram for the King
- Your Mother and I (2016), short directed by Anna Maguire, based on Eggers’ short story "Your Mother and I"
- The Circle (2017), screenplay co-written with director James Ponsoldt and based on Eggers’ novel The Circle
See also
In Spanish: Dave Eggers para niños
