ARIANNA NEVAREZ
Staff Writer
Since he was young, Dave Eggers was drawn to art, according to an interview with NPR. In first grade, writing became his “artistic centerpiece.” Now, he has six books to his name.
At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, Eggers will deliver a lecture based on the themes of his recently published book, Contrapposto.
In his career, Eggers has written books ranging from a memoir to dystopian novels. They include The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What and Contrapposto. He is also the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent, nonprofit publishing company and humor outlet based in San Francisco.
In June 2026, he published his latest release, which centers on two characters, Cricket and Olympia, and their complex relationship full of love and art. The book is “a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world,” according to the publisher’s description.
In an interview with McSweeney’s, interviewer Knopf noted this novel argues for “the irreplaceable connection that can occur between two humans, in either romance or friendship.” The interviewer asked Eggers if he thought the connection between the main characters is “rare.”
“For millions of people, there are times when you’re in love, then you’re friends, and maybe love happens again … The line for Cricket and Olympia is blurry, which I think happens with so many people who don’t get married but who provide a certain familiar comfort to each other,” Eggers said in the interview. “Together they have a kind of perfect imbalance, which is really about as good as we can do.”
While Eggers is an artist himself, he has also moved to support the arts community through Art + Water, which, according to its website, is “an art space and cultural hub dedicated to providing equitable artist workspaces, high-quality, rigorous instruction and meaningful public engagement with contemporary art.”
Art + Water provides free studio residencies, tuition-free education, affordable exhibitions and public programming for artists in San Francisco.
In a McSweeney’s article, Eggers wrote that he has heard from young people that art school has become increasingly unaffordable; he said “prohibitive costs” have led potential students to avoid considering the arts as a career.
“How do we make the arts free? How do we make them accessible so that they’re never exclusive? And that’s an obsession. Like, how do you make it so that there’s never an economic barrier to being creative?” Eggers asked in an interview with PBS. “And that’s something that, you know, you got to
fight for that.”
Eggers has talked extensively about artificial intelligence and its potential effects on the next generation. In an episode of the “Wild Card” podcast with Rachel Martin, Eggers said society is at a “scary time” in which young people are using AI to help them “express themselves.” He said teachers and people raising this generation need to make sure people are heard and embrace even their “most disjointed-seeming thoughts.”
“This is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine write for them. But I say, like, you are one of one, unprecedented in the history of human evolution. There’s only one of you,” Eggers said. “So to give your voice to a machine, to say, ‘Speak for me, I’m going to be silent,’ is such a crime
against yourself.”
