Dave Eggers

Eggers is winner of the Newbery Medal, the American Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

He is the founder of McSweeney’s, a nonprofit, independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books and a humor website. Under his leadership, McSweeney’s has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction three times and has been a finalist nine times. Along with Nínive Calegari, Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers around the United States. The whole thing started with 826 Valencia, their original center in the Mission District of San Francisco. Since then, over seventy other organizations, from Louisville to Toowoomba, Australia, operate with inspiration from the 826 Valencia model. He is also the co-founder of Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world and The International Congress of Youth Voices, an annual gathering of 100 extraordinary young writers and activists.

Eggers’ work as a journalist has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Believer, and the New Statesman. He has covered Trump rallies, life in Gaza under occupation, Ukraine during wartime, and the fragile peace in South Sudan.

Born in Boston and raised in Illinois, he has now lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for three decades. He is married to the novelist Vendela Vida, and they have two children.