Dave Eggers author page

Dave Eggers biography

Dave Eggers is an American author, editor, and publisher known for his work in contemporary literature and his contributions to supporting young writers. Born in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts, he grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying journalism before leaving to care for his younger brother after the sudden death of their parents.

His memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), details this period and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers founded the independent publishing company McSweeney’s in 1998, which produces the quarterly journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and the magazine The Believer. He is also co-founder of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping young people develop writing skills. This initiative grew into 826 National, with multiple chapters across the United States.

Eggers has authored several novels, including You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), What Is the What (2006), and The Circle (2013). His novel The Every (2021) is a sequel to The Circle. In 2023, he published The Eyes and the Impossible, a children’s book which won the 2024 Newbery Medal, awarded annually by the American Library Association to the most distinguished American children’s book published the previous year.