Eggers, Dave, 1970–, American writer, publisher, and educator, b. Boston. He began as an editor at Salon.com and a writer for several publications, founded a small magazine, and wrote a newspaper comic strip. In 2000 Eggers burst on the literary scene with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the partly fictionalized memoir about his raising, at age 21, his eight-year-old brother after their parents' deaths. Praised for its inventiveness, skillful writing, and original use of postmodern techniques, it became a best seller. His later nonfiction includes Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated (2005) and Zeitoun (2009), a tale of a Syrian immigrant's trials with Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans police. Among his novels are the acclaimed What Is the What (2006), an eloquent story of one of the lost boys of Sudan; The Wild Things (2009), inspired by Sendak's book; and A Hologram for the King (2012), in which an American consultant grapples with globalization as he attempts to do business in Saudi Arabia. Eggers also has written short stories and screenplays, and has founded (1998) a publishing house and initiated (2002) a writing program for inner-city children that now has branches in several American cities.
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