Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, a literary journal; the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia, and a human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines. 2Personal life Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of four siblings. His father, John K. Eggers (1936–1991), an attorney, was Protestant. His mother, Heidi McSweeney Eggers (1940–1992), a school teacher, was Catholic. When Eggers was still a child, the family moved to the suburb of Lake Forest, near Chicago, where he attended high school and was a classmate of actor Vince Vaughn. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, intending to get a degree in journalism. But, his studies were interrupted by the deaths of both of his parents in 1991–1992: his father in 1991 from brain and lung cancer, and his mother in January 1992 from stomach cance