Dave Eggers's Biography

Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including his most recent, Zeitoun, a nonfiction account of a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina, and What is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. That book, about Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the civil war in southern Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng and dedicated to building schools in the region. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine (The Believer), and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. In 2002, with Nínive Caligari he cofounded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Boston, and Seattle. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism, and there, with Dr. Lola Vollen, he cofounded Voice of Witness, a  series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. A native of Chicago, Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.