Dave Eggers was born on March 12, 1970. Eggers has been one of the new century’s most prolific writers, working in a range of forms—fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and screenplays.

Eggers was studying journalism at the University of Illinois when both of his parents died within a year. His younger brother, Christopher, was only eight, and his older siblings had career commitments that left them unable to care for Christopher. Eggers dropped out of school and moved to Berkeley with his brother.

He worked as an editor for the online magazine Salon and did a lot of freelance magazine writing. In 1994, Eggers was a co-founder of the magazine Might, which looked at pop culture and current events with a quirky sense of humor. Might placed its biggest footprint on the national stage with an elaborate prank, an issue dedicated to an “obituary” of 1980s child star Adam Rich. (Rich was, and still is, very much alive.)

Might folded in 1997, and Eggers founded McSweeney’s Publishing. Its first offering was the literary journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (usually just called McSweeney’s), which published some of its issues in unusual formats—a newspaper or a story told on a deck of playing cards. McSweeney’s added the monthly magazine The Believer in 2003, and between 2005 and 2012, published Wholphin, a quarterly DVD magazine featuring a variety of short films in each issue.

The events surrounding the deaths of Eggers’s parents, and his becoming Christopher’s guardian, were the basis for his first book, the 2000 memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (e-book | e-audio | print | audio). The book made multiple “best of the year” lists, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

2002 was a busy year for Eggers. He published his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), about two young friends traveling the world to give away their money. He began editing the annual Best American Nonrequired Reading series (e-book | print), a collection of essays, stories, comics, and other pieces that didn’t fit into any of the other ongoing Best American series.

And he founded 826 Valencia, a writing and tutoring center for kids between the ages of 6 and 18. The 826 project has since expanded to 6 other cities; since 2005, Los Angeles has had two 826 centers, in Mar Vista and Echo Park. Each of the 826 centers has an oddly-themed retail store attached as a fund-raiser. The original 826 Valencia in San Francisco is a supply store for pirates; the New York store caters to superheroes. The Los Angeles stores are time travel themed, selling imaginary artifacts from the past and future.

There was some controversy surrounding Eggers’ 2006 book What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (e-book | e-audio | print | audio). It was based on the life of a Sudanese child refugee, one of the “lost boys” who was displaced by the Sudanese civil war, and Eggers has described it as a collaborative project, in which he writes a fictionalized autobiography of Deng, duplicating Deng’s voice as best he can. Some critics objected to the blurring of fiction and nonfiction, and to Eggers’s appropriation of Deng’s identity.

Eggers has continued to tell the stories of immigrants to America, in a pair of books that are more clearly identifiable as nonfiction. Zeitoun (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) is the story of a Syrian-American painter and general contractor in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina; it received a “Courage in Media” award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In The Monk of Mokha (e-book | e-audio | print | audio), Eggers tells the story of a Yemeni-American from San Francisco who is trapped in Yemen when civil war breaks out while he’s visiting the country.

In 2009, Eggers made his first ventures into writing for the movies. With his wife, Vendela Vida, he wrote the romantic comedy Away We Go. He also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, and the novelization of the movie, simply called The Wild Things (e-book | e-audio | print).

Eggers has also written the screenplays for film adaptations of two of his own novels—A Hologram for the King (e-book | e-audio | print | audio | DVD), in which an American salesman tries to win the IT contract for a Saudi government building; and The Circle (e-book | e-audio | print | audio | DVD), a dark thriller about a woman working for a mysterious tech company.

In addition to his writing, Eggers is a visual artist who has had occasional gallery shows. A collection of his drawings, Ungrateful Mammals (e-book | print), was published in 2017.

Eggers has also written a few picture books for children, often about American architectural landmarks. This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (e-book | print), illustrated by Tucker Nichols, looks at how the Golden Gate Bridge came to be painted orange; and Her Right Foot (e-book | print), illustrated by Shawn Harris, is an introduction to the Statue of Liberty.

Most recently, Eggers published two novels in 2019. The Parade (e-book | e-audio | print | audio) is a short novel about two American contractors hired to build a highway in a country that has only recently returned to peace after a long and painful civil war; The Captain and the Glory (e-book | e-audio) is a broad satire about America during the Trump administration.

Also This Week

March 10, 1804

A ceremony was held in St. Louis to formally transfer the Louisiana Purchase from France to the United States. The United States purchased more than 800,000 square miles of land for fifteen million dollars, nearly doubling the size of the country. The Native American peoples who lived on the land were not involved in the transaction, and the American government spent the next several decades taking claim to their territories, sometimes by treaty or purchase, sometimes by force. In Jefferson’s America (e-book | e-audio | print), Julie M. Fenster explores Thomas Jefferson’s determination to push America westward.

March 13, 1950

William H. Macy was born. Macy is a film and television actor who is best known for his work in independent film and is often cast as a perplexed ordinary guy, down on his luck. He steps somewhat outside that range in the 2000 movie Panic, playing a professional killer who goes into therapy when he wants to leave the family business.

March 13, 1951

Charo was born. Charo is a guitarist and singer who was a popular guest on 1970s talk shows, where she cheerfully played the role of an exuberantly sexy woman who didn’t speak English very well; she became known as the “cuchi-cuchi lady.” Her date of birth is a matter of some contention. Official documents from her Spanish birthplace say she was born in 1941, but when she became a United States citizen in 1977, the judge accepted her claimed 1951 birthdate as official. Some of Charo’s music is available for streaming at Freegal and Hoopla.

March 9, 1959

The Barbie doll made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. Ruth Handler designed the doll for the Mattel toy company, inspired by the German doll Lilli; after several years of legal battles, Mattel bought the patents and copyrights for the Lilli doll. Barbie has often been criticized for promoting an unrealistic body image, and in recent years, the doll’s waist has been widened, and new models with different physiques have been introduced. Robin Gerber tells the story of Ruth Handler’s creation of Barbie in Barbie and Ruth (e-book).