David Eggers author page

Dave Eggers biography

Dave Eggers is an American author, editor and publisher, born in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, studying journalism.

In 1998 he founded the independent publishing company McSweeney’s, which issues the journal McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and publishes books, essays and experimental writing.

His breakthrough work was the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, published in 2000, which became a New York Times bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Eggers followed that with novels and nonfiction works including You Shall Know Our Velocity, What Is the What, A Hologram for the King, The Circle and The Monk of Mokha.

He co-founded the nonprofit writing and tutoring organisation 826 Valencia (later 826 National) and the educational programme ScholarMatch, connecting students with resources for college funding.

In 2023 he published the children’s and all-ages novel The Eyes & the Impossible, illustrated by Shawn Harris; that book won the 2024 John Newbery Medal.