Dave Eggers grew up close to Chicago and attended the University of Illinois. He is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, and How We Are Hungry. In 1998, he founded McSweeney's, an independent publishing house located in San Francisco that publishes books, a quarterly literary journal, the Believer, and a daily humor website. In 2002, Eggers opened 826 Valencia, a writing lab for young people located in the Mission District of San Francisco, where he teaches writing to high-school students and runs a summer publishing camp; there is now also an 826NYC in Brooklyn. With the help of his workshop students, Eggers edits a collection of fiction, essays, and journalism called The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

His fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, Punk Planet, and the New Yorker. He has recently written introductions to new editions of books by Edward Wallant, John Cheever, and Mark Twain, and is currently working on the biography of Valentino Ashak Deng, a refugee from the Sudan now living in Atlanta. Excerpts from this book have appeared in the Believer. A serial novel about electoral politics recently appeared on Salon. He currently has a weekly short-short-story section in the U.K. Guardian newspaper.

He writes regularly about art and music for magazines, including Frieze, Blind Spot, Parkett, and Spin, and his design work has been featured in many periodicals, including Print and Eye, and annuals, including Area: 100 Graphic Designers (Phaidon, 2003) and Reinventing the Wheel (2002, Princeton Architectural Press). In 2003, his designs for McSweeney's were featured in the National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and in the California Design Biennial.

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng