Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American author is both fiction and non-fiction works, as well as an editor and publisher of McSweeney's, a publishing house that he founded.
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and later moved to Lake Forest, IL before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Eggers intended to major in Journalism, but he was forced to drop out of school in 1992 to care for his eight-year-old brother after the deaths of his parents (his father in 1991 to lung and brain cancer--his mother in 1992 to stomach cancer). After putting his education on hold, Eggers, his girlfriend, and his little brother moved to Berkley, California to be close to his older sister who was attending law school. At this time, Eggers wrote his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, about his experiences raising his younger brother after his parents' deaths, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.
Eggers co-founded 826 Valencia in 2002, a nonprofit center that provides tutoring in writing and other subjects to school-age children in seven major cities across the United States (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Washington D.C, Ann Arbor, and Boston). Eggers was one of three TED Prize recipients in 2008. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, who is also a writer, and their two children.
Eggers' other works include: You Shall Know Our Velocity! (his first novel), What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Zeitoun (which has been optioned for an animated screenplay rendition of the book), The Wild Things, and he co-wrote (with Spike Jonze) the screenplay for the film version of Where the Wild Things Are.
Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and later moved to Lake Forest, IL before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Eggers intended to major in Journalism, but he was forced to drop out of school in 1992 to care for his eight-year-old brother after the deaths of his parents (his father in 1991 to lung and brain cancer--his mother in 1992 to stomach cancer). After putting his education on hold, Eggers, his girlfriend, and his little brother moved to Berkley, California to be close to his older sister who was attending law school. At this time, Eggers wrote his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, about his experiences raising his younger brother after his parents' deaths, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.
Eggers co-founded 826 Valencia in 2002, a nonprofit center that provides tutoring in writing and other subjects to school-age children in seven major cities across the United States (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Washington D.C, Ann Arbor, and Boston). Eggers was one of three TED Prize recipients in 2008. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, who is also a writer, and their two children.
Eggers' other works include: You Shall Know Our Velocity! (his first novel), What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Zeitoun (which has been optioned for an animated screenplay rendition of the book), The Wild Things, and he co-wrote (with Spike Jonze) the screenplay for the film version of Where the Wild Things Are.