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Author Dave Eggers, whose acclaimed novel The Circle is this year’s freshmen class read, will address the annual First Year Academic Convocation next Thursday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. in Conte Forum.
A writer, editor, publisher and social entrepreneur, Eggers has been recognized for his distinctive literary voice, and for giving voice to a broad range of people around the world who might not otherwise be able to tell their stories.
First Year Academic Convocation begins with the assembly of freshmen on Linden Lane, followed by the “First Flight” ceremonial walk through Gasson Hall and on to Conte Forum, a trip that mirrors the path seniors take to Alumni Stadium the morning of Commencement.
A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Eggers first gained recognition for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, about helping to raise his younger brother after their parents’ deaths. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Eggers’ latest novel was chosen as the class read by the Office of First Year Experience, which welcomes new students and parents through summer orientation programs and continues with courses, retreats and the ongoing Conversations in the First Year.
“A common reading program allows us to engage in a broader set of questions of not only ourselves but also the Boston College community at large,” according to FYE. “Dave Eggers’ The Circle provides us a unique lens, which helps us understand and reflect on our relationships.”
A fast-moving, cautionary tale about the influence of today’s high-tech organizations, The Circle offers an examination of a society where technology trumps the human experience and transparency masks the lives it was intended to reveal.
The Circle follows up on Eggers’ 2012 novel A Hologram for the King, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. At times, the prolific Eggers’ 11 books of both fiction and non-fiction appear almost as a sideline to a range of initiatives that revolve around expression and social justice.
In 1998, Eggers launched the publishing house McSweeney’s and in 2002 he co-founded 826 Valencia, a tutoring center focused on writing and education that now operates in eight cities across the United States.
His writing and social justice efforts are often closely related. Following the publication of his 2006 novel What Is the What, Eggers created the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, a literacy and education initiative named on behalf of the Sudanese civil war survivor whose life story inspired the book.
Eggers’ 2004 oral history Voice of Witness grew into a non-profit organization that reports the stories of survivors of human rights abuses and offers a human rights curriculum to schools.
Though Eggers’ books have questioned whether technology may one day eclipse our traditional forms of communication, he remains bullish on the printed word. Publishers, he said, need to respond to a fast-changing marketplace.
“There are a lot of choices out there, a lot of ways to read, and if we in the print business want to survive, we have to make print an entirely different experience from reading digitally,” Eggers recently told the Sydney Morning Herald. “So at McSweeney’s, after we spend a year or so working on a book, making the text as perfect as we can, then we try to invest in the craft of the book, the feel and heft and beauty of the object itself.”
He added, “I really think people like beautiful things, and there’s nothing more beautiful than a well-written book printed and bound and covered with care.”