Eggers, Dave (1970-…), is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He has won acclaim for his originality as a novelist and nonfiction author and for his highly personal writing style. Eggers has also been active in promoting the education of young people.
Eggers first gained recognition with his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). The book, which includes fictional elements, describes how the 21-year-old Eggers took responsibility for raising his 8-year-old brother after their father and mother died of cancer within the span of a few weeks. Critics praised the book for its humor, its stylistic invention, and its moving portrayal of the young author trying to hold his family together following the deaths of his parents.
Eggers’s first novel was You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002). His other novels include A Hologram for the King (2012), Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (2014), Heroes of the Frontier (2016), and The Parade (2019). He also wrote The Circle (2013) and a sequel called The Every (2021). Several of these novels explore social and political issues in modern life. Eggers has also written works based on the lives of real people, particularly immigrants to America. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006) tells about one of Sudan’s so-called Lost Boys. Thousands of Sudanese boys fled Sudan during a civil war that began in 1987. Years later, many of them were resettled from refugee camps to the United States. In The Monk of Mokha (2018), Eggers relates the attempt of Yemeni immigrant Mokhtar Alkhanshali to restore that war-torn nation’s ancient coffee industry.
Eggers co-wrote the motion picture Where the Wild Things Are (2009), inspired by the children’s book by Maurice Sendak. He wrote an accompanying novel, The Wild Things (2009). Eggers has written a number of books for children and young people, including This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (2015); Her Right Foot (2017); What Can a Citizen Do? and The Lifters (both 2018); Most of the Better Natural Things in the World (2019); We Became Jaguars and Faraway Things (both 2021); and The Eyes & the Impossible (2023). Eggers won the 2024 Newbery Medal for The Eyes & the Impossible. The medal is given annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American children’s literature published during the previous year. Several of Eggers’s short stories were collected in How We Are Hungry (2004). He also wrote a novella (short novel), The Honor of Your Presence (2023).
David K. Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1970, and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, after his parents died, he left the university and moved to Berkeley, California. There he founded Might magazine in 1994 and became its editor. Eggers was also an editor for Esquire magazine and the website Salon.com. From 2002 through 2013, he edited or coedited the series The Best American Nonrequired Reading, a compilation of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comics.
In 1998, Eggers founded McSweeney’s Publishing, an independent nonprofit publishing house that issues fiction, poetry, and other literature by modern writers. McSweeney’s also publishes a journal of new writing, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and the humor website McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In 2002, Eggers cofounded 826 Valencia, a writing and tutoring center for young people ages 6 to 18. The center began in San Francisco and has expanded to other chapters across the United States. In 2010, Eggers founded ScholarMatch, a program that arranges scholarships and other support to help low-income students attend college.
