Dave Eggers Books In Order

The Circle Books In Publication Order

  1. The Circle (2013)
  2. The Every (2021)

Save The Story Books In Publication Order

  1. The Story of Captain Nemo (2013)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)
  2. Hello Children (2006)
  3. What Is the What (2006)
  4. The Wild Things (2009)
  5. A Hologram for the King (2012)
  6. Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (2014)
  7. Heroes of the Frontier (2016)
  8. The Lifters (2018)
  9. The Parade (2019)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Museum of Rain (2021)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. How We Are Hungry (2005)
  2. Short Short Stories (2005)
  3. One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box (With: Deb Olin Unferth) (2007)
  4. Stories Upon Stories (With: Umberto Eco,Yiyun Li) (2014)

Picture Books In Publication Order

  1. Tomorrow Most Likely (2019)
  2. Abner & Ian Get Right-Side Up (2019)
  3. The Lights and Types of Ships at Night (With: ) (2020)
  4. We Became Jaguars (2021)
  5. Faraway Things (With: ) (2021)

Standalone Plays In Publication Order

  1. Away We Go (2009)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000)
  2. Teachers Have It Easy (2005)
  3. Surviving Justice (With: Scott Turow) (2005)
  4. Zeitoun (2009)
  5. America: Now and Here (2010)
  6. It Is Right to Draw Their Fur (2010)
  7. David Shrigley (2012)
  8. An Innocent Abroad: Life-Changing Trips from 35 Great Writers (With: Jane Smiley) (2014)
  9. Visitants (2015)
  10. Better than Fiction 2 (2015)
  11. This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (2015)
  12. Her Right Foot (2017)
  13. Ungrateful Mammals (2017)
  14. The Monk of Mokha (2018)
  15. What Can a Citizen Do? (2018)
  16. Most of the Better Natural Things in the World (2019)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 (2002)
  2. The Burned Children of America (2003)
  3. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 (2003)
  4. Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans (2004)
  5. The Best of McSweeney’s (2004)
  6. The Best Of Mcsweeney’s, Volume 2 (2004)
  7. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004 (2004)
  8. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 (2005)
  9. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (2006)
  10. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 (2007)
  11. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 (2008)
  12. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 (2009)
  13. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 (2010)
  14. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 (2011)
  15. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 (2011)
  16. Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (2012)
  17. Thirteen Crime Stories from Latin America (2014)
  18. The Writer’s Library (2020)

The Circle Book Covers

Save The Story Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Picture Book Covers

Standalone Plays Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Dave Eggers Books Overview

You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Will and Hand are burdened by $38,000 and the memory of their friend Jack. Taking a week out of their lives, they decide to travel around the world to give the money away. They can’t really say why they’re doing it, just that it needs to be done. Perhaps it’s something to do with Jack’s death perhaps they’ll find the reason later. But as their plans are frustrated, twisted and altered at every step and the natives prove far from grateful to their benefactors, Will and Hand find that the world is an infinitely bigger, more surreal and exhilarating place than they ever realised. In fact, it’s somewhere to get lost in!

What Is the What

What Is the What is an epic novel about the lives of two boys during the Sudanese civil war. For those who think they know about the so called Lost Boys of Sudan, this novel will be an eye opener. And if you think you know the work of Dave Eggers, this is in many ways a complete departure: it’s straightforward and unflinching, and yet full of unexpected humor and adventure amid the madness of war. Eggers has been working on the book for four years now, deeply entrenched in the community of Sudanese refugees in the U.S., and in 2003 went to southern Sudan with a refugee named Valentino Achak Deng. During that trip, Deng was reunited with the family he hadn’t seen in 17 years. What Is the What is a book about the lives of these two boys one, at seven, too young to know what’s happening to his country; the other, at ten, old enough to fight for the rebel army. Through it all, the two boys persevere through one of the most brutal civil wars the world has ever known, finding themselves in one unbelievable, utterly surreal situation after another. What Is the What is thought provoking, exciting, and repeatedly heartbreaking. Presented unabridged on 17 CDs.

The Wild Things

The Wild Things based very loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can t control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can t always control his outbursts. During a fight at home, Max flees and runs away into the woods. He finds a boat there, jumps in, and ends up on the open sea, destination unknown. He lands on the island of The Wild Things, and soon he becomes their king. But things get complicated when Max realizes that The Wild Things want as much from him as he wants from them. Funny, dark, and alive, The Wild Things is a timeless and time tested tale for all ages.

How We Are Hungry

How We Are Hungry is a gripping, lyrical, and always intensely soulful group of stories written over the past four years. Though they range from a doomed Irish setter’s tales of running and jumping ‘After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned’ to a bitterly comic meditation on suicide and friendship ‘Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance’, the stories share a haunting and haunted sense of mortality. Though full of bursts of levity and humor, the book is deeply informed by the troubled times in which it was written. How We Are Hungry includes many never before published stories, along with a number of pieces that first appeared in magazines, both well known Zoetrope, The New Yorker and small and independent h2s04, Ninth Letter. All previously published stories have been significantly revised. The urgency and experimentalism of Eggers’s earlier work are still present, but are brought to a new level of precision and craft, injecting fresh life into traditional forms. Narratives are often linear, told by distinct and varied voices, and settings stretch from Egypt to Interstate 5.

One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box (With: Deb Olin Unferth)

In the grand tradition of Neapolitan ice cream, ZZ Top, and Cerberus, the tri headed guardian of Hades, this set combines individual, short fiction collections by three talented practitioners of the short short form. Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is a series of crystalline recollections of her childhood misadventures; Eggers How the Water Feels to the Fishes brings a deadpan absurdism to the intimacy and vision of his earlier work; and Unferth s rollicking Minor Robberies unleashes a horde of off kilter characters and their indelible misadventures. Each author s work comes in its own hardcover, foil stamped volume, and the three volumes are housed in an elegant slipcase.

Away We Go

The first original screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Away We Go is the new movie direcetd by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes. Longtime couple Verona Maya Rudolph and Burt John Krasinski are expecting a baby, and the impending child’s only living grandparents are moving to where else Belgium. So Burt and Verona head out on the road, across America, looking for the right place to call home. Along the way they encounter a succession of strange and hilarious friends and relatives played by a cast that includes Jeff Daniels, Catherine O Hara, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney, and Jim Gaffigan, most of whom have no idea what they re doing. In the end with and despite the help of those they meet on their journey Burt and Verona come closer to an understanding of their own definition of home and family.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

‘Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn’t want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty four, Beth was twenty three, I was twenty one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter. So when something world come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I…
Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy’s dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea I mean, wicca? and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over.’

Teachers Have It Easy

A startling call to action for improving the working lives of public school teachers.

Dave Eggers, acclaimed author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, son and brother of teachers, co founder of writing centers in New York and San Francisco, and passionate education advocate, joins forces with teacher N nive Clements Calegari and journalist Daniel Moulthrop to examine a national scandal that affects us all. Many teachers today must work two or more jobs to survive; they can’t afford to buy homes or raise families. Why are they paid so poorly? How is this related to student achievement? And how can we find ways to treat them like the professionals they are?

Teachers Have It Easy examines how bad policy intersects with teachers’ lives. Interweaving teachers’ voices from across the country with hard hitting facts and figures, the book is a clear eyed view of the harsh realities of public school teaching, without any chicken soup for the soul success stories. With a look at the problems of recruitment and retention, the myths of short workdays and endless summer vacations, the realities of the work week, and shocking examples of how society views America’s teachers, Teachers Have It Easy explores why salary reform may be the best way to improve public education and examines how innovative compensation plans can transform schools.

Surviving Justice (With: Scott Turow)

Beverly Monroe spent seven years in prison for murdering her companion of thirteen years; even though he had killed himself. Christopher Ochoa was persuaded to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit, and served twelve years of his life sentence before being freed by DNA evidence. Michael Evans and Paul Terry each served twenty seven years in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit. They were teenagers when they entered prison and middle aged when DNA proved their innocence. After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence have been released from America’s prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful interrogation tactics, misidentifications, and more. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, the wrongly condemned re enter society with nothing but scars from prison life only to struggle for survival on the outside. The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. By all estimates, there are thousands of innocent victims in prison today. Surviving Justice tells their unimaginable and inspiring stories.

Zeitoun

A riveting account of Hurricane Katrina and a shocking tale of wrongful arrest and racism, Zeitoun is the true story of one Syrian American, plucked from his home and accused of terrorism, written by one of America’s most high profile literary writers, now available for the first time in paperback from Vintage Canada. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun‘s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy an American who converted to Islam and their children, and the surreal atmosphere in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research in this case, in the United States, Spain, and Syria.

David Shrigley

Best known for his wry and witty drawings, British artist David Shrigley has built up an artistic practice that, over the past two decades, has expanded well beyond drawing to include photography, sculpture, neon signs, animation, painting, printmaking, publishing and music. Shrigley finds humor in flat depictions of the inconsequential and the bizarre, qualities that he heightens through a deliberately limited technique. In this unusually complete look at the much loved artist’s diverse approaches, Shrigley is revealed as a master of many media and many kinds of humor, from the black humor for which he is famed to caricature and more slapstick situations. With an immediate and accessible appeal to diverse audiences, Shrigley’s work offers an insightful commentary on the absurdities of human relationships. Published on the occasion of the artist’s first major survey show, at London’s Hayward Gallery, this beautifully produced volume includes a 7′ vinyl picture disc, featuring an exclusive recording by the artist. David Shrigley was born in Macclesfield, England, in 1968, and studied Environmental Art at the Glasgow School of Art from 1988 1991. As well as authoring numerous books, he directed the video for Blur’s ‘Good Song’ and for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s ‘Agnes, Queen of Sorrow.’ Between 2005 and 2009, he contributed a cartoon for the U.K. Guardian Weekend magazine every Saturday.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002

This collection is the product of many heads. The writers included herein are from every background imaginable, and their stories create a crazy quilt of lived time in and around 2001.

This is The Best American Nonrequired Reading, intended to combine the best intentions of the other Best American volumes to create a collection with slightly younger readers. To that end, guest editor Dave Eggers worked with the students who attend and help teach at 826 Valencia, his writing lab in San Francisico, giving them hundreds of stories and articles to read and choose among. All of the selections inside have been read and found worthy by a small committee of readers in high school and college, and while there are patterns in what they chose for example, a stroing interest in goings on not just in school but all over the world they’ve also guided this collection toward its utter undefinablility.

There are some really funny things, from the likes of David Sedaris, The Onion, and Modern Humorist, and some lighter fiction, as in David Schickler’s ‘Fourth Angry Mouse’ and Elizabeth McKenzie’s ‘Stop That Girl,’ about a hellish trip to Switzerland that a twelve year old takes with her grandmother, but there’s a seriousness throughout, with stories about immigrants from Mexico in Manhattan, young Afghani men vacillating between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and the black coach of a Pennsylvania Amish basketball team.

This collection is barely cohesive and often confusing. And this is good. Your own life, we bet, is barely cohesive and often confusing. And given how confused and wayward you are, we will help you do the right thing: read this and love it. The makers of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 insist that you enjoy it and then tell your friends to enjoy it. This will give structure to your life and bounce to your steps.

You’re welcome.

The Burned Children of America

This volume brings together the most promising young American authors, with a penchant for writing about such slippery subjects as snakes, letter writing dogs, chicken livers and indoor shopping malls.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003

This collection is the product of many heads. The writers included herein are from every background imaginable, and their stories create a crazy quilt of lived time in and around 2001.

This is The Best American Nonrequired Reading, intended to combine the best intentions of the other Best American volumes to create a collection with slightly younger readers. To that end, guest editor Dave Eggers worked with the students who attend and help teach at 826 Valencia, his writing lab in San Francisico, giving them hundreds of stories and articles to read and choose among. All of the selections inside have been read and found worthy by a small committee of readers in high school and college, and while there are patterns in what they chose for example, a stroing interest in goings on not just in school but all over the world they’ve also guided this collection toward its utter undefinablility.

There are some really funny things, from the likes of David Sedaris, The Onion, and Modern Humorist, and some lighter fiction, as in David Schickler’s ‘Fourth Angry Mouse’ and Elizabeth McKenzie’s ‘Stop That Girl,’ about a hellish trip to Switzerland that a twelve year old takes with her grandmother, but there’s a seriousness throughout, with stories about immigrants from Mexico in Manhattan, young Afghani men vacillating between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and the black coach of a Pennsylvania Amish basketball team.

This collection is barely cohesive and often confusing. And this is good. Your own life, we bet, is barely cohesive and often confusing. And given how confused and wayward you are, we will help you do the right thing: read this and love it. The makers of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 insist that you enjoy it and then tell your friends to enjoy it. This will give structure to your life and bounce to your steps.

You’re welcome.

Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans

Now more than ever, Americans are troubled by questions. As sweaty modernity thrusts itself upon us, the veil of ignorance that cloaked our nation hangs in tatters, tattered tatters. Our ‘funny bones’ are neither fun nor bony. Glum is the new giddy, and the old giddy wasn’t too giddy to begin with. What can be done to stop this relentless march of drabbery? Nothing. But perhaps this book can be used to dull the pain. Included herein: The Ten Worst Films of All Time, as Reviewed by Ezra Pound over Italian Radio Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002, for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD Platinum Series Extended Edition, Part One. How Important Moments in My Life Would Have Been Different If I Was Shot in the Stomach My Beard, Reviewed Circumstances under Which I Would Have Sex with Some of My Fellow Jurors Words That Would Make Nice Names for Babies, If It Weren’t for Their Unsuitable Meanings As a Po*rn Movie Titler, I May Lack Promise Ineffective Ways to Subdue a Jaguar Eleven Lunch Meats I Have Invented Four Things I Would Have Said to Sylvia Plath if I Had Been Her Boyfriend And much, much more, including 20 brilliant new lists…

The Best of McSweeney’s

This book collects some of the best stories from the first ten issues of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the literary journal that has become one of the country’s most important and influential publications. McSweeney’s began as a small collection of work rejected by other magazines, but it soon began to publish pieces primarily written for the journal, and to attract some of the finest writers in the country. Contributors to Best of McSweeney’s, Volume One include Jonathan Lethem, Glen David Gold, A. M. Homes, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Amanda Davis, George Saunders, Paul Collins, and William Vollmann, as well as many talented newcomers. Stories included here have been selected for The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories, and one was performed in a regional musical theater.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004

It’s hard to imagine that it was just a year ago that we were finishing up last year’s Best American Nonrequired Reading! Then again, doing last year’s collection last year, as opposed to this year, seems to have been the right way to go. We took a gamble on that decision, and it paid off. Like last year, our Best American mailbag is full of letters, written in crayon and blood and begging to be answered. Let us begin. What is this collection again? You told me last year, but I spaced. Dominique, Santa Monica, CA Thank you for your question, Dominique, which I am happy to answer in much the same fashion as I did last year, when you first asked. The purpose of this book is to collect good work of any kind fiction, humor, essays, comics, journalism in one place, for the English reading consumer. The first edition of the book could also be used as a low frequency ham radio, but this feature has been discontinued. Who are these ‘826 All Stars’ who are credited with co editing this book? Dan and Becky, Newport, RI The 826 All Stars is a moniker for a student committee, stalwart and true, that sifts through virtually everything published in the United States in a given year and from this morass did we say morass? We meant to say bounty finds the best twenty five or so writings that work together and don’t include references to besti*ality or John Ashcroft or both. The student committee goes by these names: Alexei Wajchman, Kevin Feeney, Alison Cagle, Jeremy Ashkenas, Juliet Linderman, Adrienne Mahar, Antal Polony, Francesca Root Dodson, Sabrina Ramos, and Jennifer Florin. They are all high school students from the San Franciso Bay area. What sorts of things were eligible? Work from any periodicals at all? Dorsetta Cable, Pacifica, CA It’s nice to hear from you, Dorsetta. The answer to your question is yes, as long as these periodicals are American and not about stereos of zombies or poetry. We always make a very concerted effort to include work from lesser known magazines and quarterlies and Web sites, and we did find some great things in some small circulation publications we did a better job of including such work this year than ever before. You should be very proud of your daughter. Why is Viggo Mortensen writing an introduction to this book? You would think he would have better things to do. Was this part of some kind of work release program or what? Lucy Hackett, Medfield, MA This collection’s mission, if there is one and there isn’t is to bring new writing to new audiences. We hope that people will pick up this book after seeing the name or names of a few writers they like and then become exposed to other good people who write. Viggo has been associated with 826 Valencia for some time, having helped us with fund raising and such. He is also a noted poet and artist, and thus the perfect ambassador for this collection, bringing, we hope, new people to some great contemporary writing. We can only hope that this introduction writing business takes off for him, given how lucrative it is and how much glory attends it.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005

The Best American Series First, Best, and Best Selling

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 includes

Daniel Alarc n Aimee Bender Dan Chaon Daniel Clowes Tish Durkin Stephen Elliott Al Franken Jhumpa Lahiri Rattawut Lapcharoensap Anders Nilsen Georges Saunders William T. Vollmann and others

Dave Eggers, editor, is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, and How We Are Hungry, and the editor of McSweeney’s. He is the founder of 826 Valencia, a San Francisco writing lab for young people.

Beck, guest introducer, whose single ‘Loser’ was instantly labeled an anthem for the slacker generation, is also known for his Grammy Award winning albums Odelay and Mutations.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006

From Dave Eggers: For this year’s edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, we wanted to expand the scope of the book to include shorter pieces, and fragments of stories, and transcripts, screenplays, television scripts lots of things that we hadn t included before. Our publisher readily agreed, and so you ll see that this year s edition is far more eclectic in form than previous editions. Along the way to making the book, we also came across a variety of things that didn t fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included, so we conceived the front section, which is a loose Best American roundup of notable words and sentences from 2005. It is, like this book in general, obviously and completely incomplete, but might be interesting nevertheless.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007

From the Introduction, Featuring an Interview with Judy Blume

The book you re holding is part of a series which every year seeks to compile a varied and unexpected anthology of fiction, nonfiction, essays, journalism, comics, and humor. The books in the Nonrequired series are still assembled in much the same way they ve always been passionately and unscientifically. This anthology, part of the Best American juggernaut that includes everything from the original Best American Sheetrock Poetry to the newest addition, Best American Canadian Marsupial Short Fiction Featuring Lewd Woodworking, is considered the best of them all, chiefly because ours usually features the highest volume of cursing.

In an effort to keep the collection moving in new ways and avoid litigation, we decided to ask questions of our guest introducer, the unimprovable Judy Blume.

There’s actually a piece in this collection called Are You There God? It s Me. Also, a Bunch of Zombies. Is this the first time someone has adapted one of your titles to apply to the undead?
Judy Blume: As far as I know this is the first time my title has been adapted to apply to the undead. Let s hope it s the last? I ve told my husband I think I should have a headstone someday that reads: ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT S ME…

JUDY BLUME Or would that be too weird?

Was it important for you to put positive moral values in your young adult books?
JB: I don t think the best stories come out of a place where the author is determined to put in positive moral values. I mean, whose values? I m happy when my characters behave in an ethical way. But they re not always going to. An exception was Forever…
I wanted to show two decent teens taking responsibility for their actions. But really, I m just telling stories. I hope my readers will come away thinking. I hope they find something in my books they can relate to, something that illuminates life for them.

Were you like any of the characters in your books?
JB: I was like my character Sally Freedman. I had a lot of imagination. Often, what I imagined was worse than reality. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself is my most autobiographical book. My fourth grade teacher, whom I fictionalized in Sally J., recently died. I met up with her when Double Fudge was published and she came to a talk/signing in the Miami area. It was a thrill to introduce her to the audience. My sixth grade experience was like Margaret s in Are You There God? It s Me, Margaret. And yes, I did those breast enhancement exercises. And no, they didn t work for me.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008

From the Introduction, Featuring an Interview with Judy Blume

The book you re holding is part of a series which every year seeks to compile a varied and unexpected anthology of fiction, nonfiction, essays, journalism, comics, and humor. The books in the Nonrequired series are still assembled in much the same way they ve always been passionately and unscientifically. This anthology, part of the Best American juggernaut that includes everything from the original Best American Sheetrock Poetry to the newest addition, Best American Canadian Marsupial Short Fiction Featuring Lewd Woodworking, is considered the best of them all, chiefly because ours usually features the highest volume of cursing.

In an effort to keep the collection moving in new ways and avoid litigation, we decided to ask questions of our guest introducer, the unimprovable Judy Blume.

There’s actually a piece in this collection called Are You There God? It s Me. Also, a Bunch of Zombies. Is this the first time someone has adapted one of your titles to apply to the undead?
Judy Blume: As far as I know this is the first time my title has been adapted to apply to the undead. Let s hope it s the last? I ve told my husband I think I should have a headstone someday that reads: ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT S ME…

JUDY BLUME Or would that be too weird?

Was it important for you to put positive moral values in your young adult books?
JB: I don t think the best stories come out of a place where the author is determined to put in positive moral values. I mean, whose values? I m happy when my characters behave in an ethical way. But they re not always going to. An exception was Forever…
I wanted to show two decent teens taking responsibility for their actions. But really, I m just telling stories. I hope my readers will come away thinking. I hope they find something in my books they can relate to, something that illuminates life for them.

Were you like any of the characters in your books?
JB: I was like my character Sally Freedman. I had a lot of imagination. Often, what I imagined was worse than reality. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself is my most autobiographical book. My fourth grade teacher, whom I fictionalized in Sally J., recently died. I met up with her when Double Fudge was published and she came to a talk/signing in the Miami area. It was a thrill to introduce her to the audience. My sixth grade experience was like Margaret s in Are You There God? It s Me, Margaret. And yes, I did those breast enhancement exercises. And no, they didn t work for me.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

This ‘great volume’ highlights the ‘very best of this year’s fiction, nonfiction, alternative comics, screenplys, blogs and more’ OK!. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, it is ‘both uproarious and illuminating’ Publishers Weekly.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010

An eclectic volume introduced by David Sedaris and compiled by Dave Eggers and students of his San Francisco writing center, who don t leave a stone unturned in their search for nonrequired gems. Cover art by art by Maurice Sendak.

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