Illini Union One Book, one campus
The Illini Union staff and One Book, One Campus Committee are pleased to announce that Illinois alumnus, journalist, best-selling author and publisher Dave Eggers will return to the University of Illinois to give the 2010 One Book, One Campus keynote lecture based on his book, Zeitoun. The lecture is free and open to the public. Three years in the making, Zeitoun, originally published in 2009 by McSweeney?s, is a nonfiction account of a New Orleans married couple named Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun and their family, whose lives took compelling and very nearly tragic turns in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Dave Eggers, a former Daily Illini editor and a University of Illinois graduate in journalism, is founder of the independent publisher McSweeney?s and author of six previous books including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity, winner of the Independent Book Award and What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France?s Prix Medici. He is also co-founder of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth with 826 centers throughout the nation, including Chicago. Dave Eggers has also co-founded three nonprofit philanthropic organizations: the Valentio Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng, his subject in What is the What, and devoted to building secondary schools in southern Sudan; Voices of Witness, dedicated to publishing book series based on human rights crises around the world; and Zeitoun Foundation, formed in 2009 to continue the rebuilding and social advancement of New Orleans and to promote understanding of disparate faiths around the world.
The Illini Union One Book, One Campus program, now in its sixth year, hopes to provide a sense of shared community for the students, staff, and faculty of the University of Illinois through the reading, discussion and focus on a single book as a voluntary, extracurricular activity. Former OBOC book choices have included Acts of Faith by alumnus Eboo Patel, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
