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Monday 02.01.2010 @ 7:00pm

Venue: Berkeley Rep (click here for venue details)

Acclaimed columnist Jon Carroll will host an evening in conversation with the sensational best-selling author Dave Eggers. Eggers recently worked with beloved author Maurice Sendak to adapt the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are both for the big screen, and a hugely successful teen version of the story called The Wild Things. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house, and is co-founder of 826 Valencia, a non-profit writing center for youth.

His first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a memoir (with fictional elements,) shook the literary world, quickly becoming a bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. His other works include You Shall Know Our Velocity, Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, and What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.)

Zeitoun, Egger’s best-selling work of narrative non-fiction telling the story of a Hurricane Katrina survivor published in July 2009, was called “riveting, intimate, wide-scanning, disturbing, and inspiring” by Vanity Fair.

Eggers will talk about his incredible journey, both as a writer and advocate for aspiring writers in this lively and candid conversation.

The evening’s proceeds benefit the academic and financial assistance programs at Park Day School in Oakland.