DAVE EGGERS

Dave Eggers, co-founder of the International Congress of Youth Voices, is the author of many books, including The Parade, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, What Is the What, A Hologram for the King, and The Lifters.

He is founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books and a journal of new writing, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. McSweeney’s also launched Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. 

Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers around the United States. Numerous other organizations worldwide operate with inspiration from the 826 National model. Realizing the need for greater college access for low-income students, Eggers founded ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization designed to connect students with resources, schools and donors to make college possible.

Eggers’s novel What Is the What, about the life of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee from the civil war in South Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng. VADF operates secondary schools in South Sudan.

Eggers’s books for young readers include Her Right Foot, This Bridge Will Not Be Gray, and The Wild Things.

Eggers is winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Heinz Award, and the National Book Foundation Literarian Award. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2006 he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.