Dave Eggers
| Dave Eggers | |
|---|---|
Eggers at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival
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| Born |
March 12, 1970 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, editor, publisher, philanthropist |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1993–present |
| Literary movement | Postmodern literature, post-postmodern, new sincerity |
| Notable works | A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Zeitoun (2009), A Hologram for the King (2012), The Circle (2013) |
| Notable awards | Heinz Award, Independent Publisher Book Award, Prix Médicis, Los Angeles Times Book Prize |
| Website | |
| www |
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Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, a literary journal; the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia, and a 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.
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father, John K. Eggers (1936–1991), an attorney, was Protestant. His mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), a school teacher, was Catholic. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago, where he attended high school and was a classmate of actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism. But, his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents in 1991–1992: his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cancer. Both were in their 50s.
These events were chronicled in his first book, the fictionalized A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the time, Eggers was 21, and his younger brother, Christopher ("Toph"), was 8 years old. The two eldest siblings, Bill and Beth, were unable to commit to care for Toph; his older brother had a full-time job and his sister was enrolled in law school. As a result, Dave Eggers took the 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' sister, 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, he took over a local free newspaper called Cups. This gradually evolved into the satirical magazine Might.
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