Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggersis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 March 1970
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
All I ever wanted was to know what to do.
Our town was rigid in many ways, in terms of the uniformity of things, the colors of skin, the makes of cars, the lushness of the lawns, but on top of that it was sort of a blank canvas so-and again, I guess this is true of any child-I was ready to quickly accept the sudden and total substitutions of all I knew to be true.
The kids sit facing the white board and collectively tell a story, ... As they're coming up with the story, there's a typist sitting here, so they see their words coming up on the wall.
I try to get anybody coming to San Francisco to come to the Mission. Not to misuse the word 'authentic' - I think that's such a troubling word - but the Mission really does have all the best parts of San Francisco intersecting here.
They took my mother's stomach out six months ago.
It's our theory that everything trickles down from there, ... That if you have high salaries, good conditions, you have good support. You have a lot of communication between teachers, you pay for teachers' supplemental training, and the students learn.
So this is the space during tutoring hours. It's very busy. Same principles: one-on-one attention, complete devotion to the students' work and a boundless optimism and sort of a possibility of creativity and ideas.
I don't think there's a neighborhood where more writers live. There is no neighborhood in the world - and I've looked - with more independent bookstores in such a small area.
I'd rather people just borrow the idea and do their own thing in their own community, ... Whenever people can just start on their own, without our imprimatur, all the better. The model works, but we don't own the patent.
I am myself a failed cartoonist, There are a million reasons to ruin things.