Dave Eggers

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Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers at the 2005 Hay Festival
Pseudonym:	Daniel O'Mara, Lucy Thomas, Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, others
Born:	March 12, 1970 Chicago, Illinois
Occupation:	writer, editor, publisher
Nationality:	United States
Genres:	fiction, memoir, humor
Debut works:	A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
Website:	McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher.

Contents 1 Life 2 Work 3 Bibliography 3.1 Nonfiction 3.2 Fiction 3.3 Humour books 3.4 Other 3.5 As editor or contributor (non-McSweeney's publications) 4 Misc 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Life

Eggers was born in Chicago, Illinois, grew up in suburban Lake Forest, and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[1] He lives in San Francisco and is married to the writer Vendela Vida.^[2] In October 2005, Vendela gave birth to a daughter, October Adelaide Eggers Vida.^[3]

Eggers's brother Bill is a researcher who has worked for several conservative think tanks, doing research on privatization.^[4] His sister, Beth, claimed that Eggers grossly understated her role in raising their brother Toph and made use of her journals in writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius without compensating her.^[5] She later recanted her claims in a posting on her brother's own website McSweeney's Internet Tendency, calling them "a really terrible LaToya Jackson moment."^[6] On March 1, 2002, the New York Post reported that Beth, then a lawyer in Modesto, California, had committed suicide.^[7] Eggers briefly spoke about his sister's death during a 2002 fan interview for McSweeney's.^[8]

[edit] Work

Eggers began writing as a Salon.com editor and founded Might magazine, while also writing a comic strip called Smarter Feller (originally Swell, then Smart Feller) for SF Weekly.^[9] His first book was a memoir (with fictional elements), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). It focuses on the author's struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco following the sudden deaths of their parents. The book quickly became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The memoir was praised for its originality, idiosyncratic self-referencing, and for several innovative stylistic elements. Early printings of the 2001 trade-paperback edition were published with a lengthy, apologetic postscript entitled "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making".

In 2002, Eggers published his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, a story about a frustrating attempt to give away money to deserving people while haphazardly traveling the globe. An expanded and revised version was released as Sacrament in 2003 and retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity! for its Vintage imprint distribution. He has since published a collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, and three politically-themed serials for Salon.com.^[10] In November 2005, Eggers published Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, compiling the book of interviews with exonerees once sentenced to death. The book was compiled with Lola Vollen, "a physician specializing in the aftermath of large-scale human rights abuses" and "a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of International Studies and a practicing clinician."^[11] Novelist Scott Turow wrote the introduction to Surviving Justice. Eggers's most recent novel, What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (McSweeney's, 2006), was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.^[12] Eggers is also the editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading series, an annual anthology of short stories, essays, journalism, satire, and alternative comics.

Eggers is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house. McSweeney's produces a quarterly literary journal, McSweeney's, first published in 1998; a monthly journal, The Believer, which debuted in 2003 and is edited by wife Vida; and, beginning in 2005, a quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin. Other works include The Future Dictionary of America, Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans, and the "Dr. and Mr. Haggis-On-Whey" children's books, which Eggers writes with his younger brother. Ahead of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Eggers wrote an essay about the US national team and soccer in the United States for The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, a book published with aid of the journal Granta, that contained essays about each competing team in the tournament.

Eggers currently teaches writing in San Francisco at 826 Valencia, a nonprofit tutoring center and writing school for children that he cofounded in 2002. Eggers has recruited volunteers to operate similar programs in Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, all under the auspices of the nonprofit organization 826 National.^[13] In 2006, he appeared at a series of fundraising events, dubbed the Revenge of the Book–Eaters tour, to support these programs. The Chicago show, at the Park West theatre, featured Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. Other performers on the tour included Sufjan Stevens, Jon Stewart and David Byrne.^[14]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Nonfiction

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
• Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers (co-authored with Daniel Moulthrop and Nínive Clements Calegari) (2005)
• Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated (co-compiled with Lola Vollen; with an introduction by Scott Turow) (2005)

[edit] Fiction

• You Shall Know Our Velocity (novel) (2002)
• Sacrament (novel, revised and expanded version of YSKOV) (2003)
• The Unforbidden is Compulsory; or, Optimism (story) (2004)
• How We Are Hungry (stories) (2004)
• Short Short Stories (short prose, part of the Pocket Penguin series) (2005)
• What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (novel) (2006)

[edit] Humour books

• Giraffes? Giraffes! (as Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, co-authored with Christopher Eggers) (2003)
• Your Disgusting Head (as Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, co-authored with Christopher Eggers) (2004)
• Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid (as Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, co-authored with Christopher Eggers) (2006)

[edit] Other

• Jokes Told in Heaven about Babies (as Lucy Thomas) (2003)
• Salon.com serials: "The Unforbidden Is Compulsory Or, Optimism", "The Fishmonger Returns", and "New Hampshire Is for Lovers" (2004)
• Screenplay Adaptation of the children's book Where the Wild Things Are

[edit] As editor or contributor (non-McSweeney's publications)

• Speaking with the Angel: Original Stories, edited by Nick Hornby (Contributor) (2000)
• The Onion Ad Nauseam: The Complete News Archives, Volume 13 (Introduction) (2002)
• The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002 (Selected by, with Joyce Carol Oates and Colson Whitehead) (2002)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 (Editor, with Michael Cart) (2002)
• The Tenants of Moonbloom, by Edward Lewis Wallant (Reissue of Wallant's 1963 novel) (Introduction) (2003)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 (Editor; Introduction by Zadie Smith) (2003)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 (Editor; Introduction by Viggo Mortensen) (2004)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 (Editor; Introduction by Beck) (2005)
• The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey (Contributor) (2006)
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (Editor; Introduction by Matt Groening) (2006)
• John Currin (Contributor; additional text by John Currin, Norman Bryson, and Alison Gingeras) (2006)

[edit] Misc

• Eggers went to high school with Vince Vaughn.^[15]
• Eggers reportedly turned down a $2 million movie deal from New Line and Miramax.^[16]
• From the 2006 movie John Tucker Must Die: "She likes old-school Elvis Costello, listens to obscure podcasts and she reads Dave Eggers. She's deep."^[17]
• On Beck's 2006 album The Information, Eggers can be heard talking with Spike Jonze during the final track, "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton". The third section of the track features Eggers and Jonze responding to Beck's question "What would the ultimate record that ever could possibly be made sound like?"^[18]

[edit] External links

• Author page on the McSweeney's website (features a detailed bibliography)
• Interview on The Onion AV Club
• "The Second Coming of Dave" by Sheerly Avni, a 2004 article from San Francisco magazine.
• "People Should Not Laugh at Savings" A humorous short piece written by Eggers under the pseudonym Lucy Thomas and included in the collection Jokes Told in Heaven About Babies.

[edit] References