PEN HG Wells Lecture 2018: Dave Eggers

Award-winning American writer, editor, publisher and philanthropist Dave Eggers will deliver this year’s PEN HG Wells Lecture, sponsored by the Times Literary Supplement. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from this brilliant author, literacy and human rights advocate, and champion of the printed word.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and The Monk of Mokha, covering subjects from the boundaries of technological privacy and freedom to modern migration. He is the founder of the independent San Francisco publisher McSweeney’s, which publishes Voice of Witness, a non-profit oral history series that illuminates global human rights crises, and ScholarMatch, a non-profit organization connecting students with resources to make college possible. Eggers is also co-founder of the 826 National network of tutoring centres. In 2018, Eggers co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices, an annual gathering of 100 extraordinary young writers and activists; their landmark meeting in San Francisco resulted in a youth-written manifesto published by the Guardian.

The HG Wells Lecture showcases visionary writing and new thinking, and is held in honour of the former PEN president, author, visionary and human rights campaigner HG Wells. Wells foresaw the creation of the worldwide web, most notably in a series of talks and essays entitled World Brain. Other revolutionary ideas set out in The Rights of Man influenced the development of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which celebrates its 75th year on 10 December 2018.