It’s the birthday of Dave Eggers, best known for his fictionalized memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), for founding McSweeney’s publishing house, and for his work in literacy.

Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1970. His parents were a lawyer and a schoolteacher, and Eggers studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (So far so good.) Then in 1990 – 91 both parents died of cancer, and suddenly Eggers was responsible for raising his eight-year-old brother. They moved to Berkeley, California, where his older sister was in law school, and did some temp and freelance work, eventually working for Salon.com and cofounding Might Magazine; the magazine didn’t last but published some folks like David Foster Wallace.

In 1998, Eggers founded McSweeney’s, which among other things puts out the lit magazine Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. The journal is kind of hugely expensive for a lit journal (a subscription is $95; most recent issues sell for $26 each), but they publish a panoply of fiction and nonfiction written by cutting-edge new names and Big Fat Important Names like David Mitchell and Zadie Smith and T.C. Boyle. And if you go back six or seven issues, they knock the price down to $10, and… THERE, I’ve just ordered my first ever issue. McSweeney’s also publishes the satirical online mag, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Give it a shot. Today’s headline reads, “In Retrospect, the Theme for Chad’s 4th Birthday Party Should Not Have Been ‘Stanford Prison Experiment.’”

In 2000, Eggers published his account of raising his little brother, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. (Best. Title. Ever.) It vaulted him to instant fame and garnered him a Pulitzer nomination. While Eggers continued to write, he also founded in 2002 the literacy nonprofit 826 Valencia (eventually renamed 826 National). Eggers’ many teacher friends said they really needed “more bodies” to help with students struggling to read and write at grade level. So Eggers opened up a space for one-on-one tutoring in the same building as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. The space was zoned for retail, so in order to meet this requirement, the front of the building became a pirate supply store. Truly. (This gives you a taste of the McSweeney’s sense of humor.) So it goes pirate supply store, tutoring center, then McSweeney’s offices. More of these centers began opening up across the U.S.; Brooklyn has the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store, and L.A. has The Echo Park Time Travel Mart. In 2007, Eggers won the $250,000 Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities and put all the money into 826 National.

Eggers lives in the San Francisco area with his wife Vendela Vida and two children. His most recent work includes the novel Heroes of the Frontier (2016) and the nonfiction work The Monk of Mokha (2018).

Go forth inspired to do good in the world on this cold gray Monday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.