Dave Eggers

Poets read to rapt audiences, and authors of fiction tried to explain the creative process. Celebrity chefs lured big crowds to sit under a hot sun, and mystery writers answered questions in SRO auditoriums. There was something for almost everyone at the 16th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held this past weekend on the USC campus. What follows is a sampling of reports on the festival from the Jacket Copy blog. Meeting Ginsberg Before she read a section from "Just Kids," punk poetess Patti Smith set up the audience to laugh.

If literary lions still exist, Dave Eggers is one. His debut, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," hit bestseller lists in early 2000, creating a dedicated fan base. Since then, he's helped shepherd McSweeney's, the literary quarterly he founded, led its quirky yet ever-growing publishing concern, edited the annual "Best American Non-Required Reading" anthology and continued to do his creative work.

Dave Eggers doesn't look like a newspaper baron. At 39, wearing a baseball cap and hiking boots, the author -- whose most recent project is the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are" -- appears more an older brother to the interns who work feverishly in the Mission District offices of McSweeney's, the independent publisher Eggers founded with the proceeds from his bestselling 2000 memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." In addition to books and a monthly magazine, McSweeney's publishes a literary journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the new issue of which is set to appear here today in a form that confounds every trend in publishing: a 300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama, with which Eggers and company mean to celebrate the glory of the form.

For singles who brave the jungles of online dating, there's nothing like an experienced friend or two to offer advice. "Should I Photoshop out my Marilyn Monroe mole?" "What does it mean that her favorite movie is 'The Exorcist'?" "Do my smoldering eyes in this profile photo say, 'I'm yours' or 'I'm in pain?'" Now imagine you had a few million friends who could guide you through the thicket with their epic tales of success and failure. That's the idea behind OkTrends (blog.okcupid.com)

Filmmaker Judd Apatow and author Dave Eggers seem an unlikely pairing ? one is an A-list, broad comedy writer-director-producer prone to fart jokes and penis cameos ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express" are among Apatow's hugely successful credits); the other is a somewhat headier literary hipster who has penned an acclaimed memoir, several novels and just enough screenplays to earn some Hollywood cred (Eggers wrote "Where the Wild Things Are" and co-wrote, with his wife, Vendela Vida, "Away We Go")

Rafael Yglesias took the top fiction honor Friday at the 30th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes for his novel "A Happy Marriage," while Dave Eggers won the current interest award for "Zeitoun," about a Syrian immigrant swept up in the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans. Eggers also won The Times' first Innovators Award. He leads McSweeney's, which publishes books, magazines and a "shape-shifting quarterly journal." He also founded 826 literacy centers, which help at-risk children engage with the written word.

Finalists for the 30th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced on Monday, and for the first time, graphic novels will be among the categories in competition. Prizes in 10 categories will be awarded on April 23, in an invitation-only ceremony at The Times. In addition to the new graphic novel category, The Times will also present its first Innovators Award, which will go to author and publisher Dave Eggers for his multifaceted, spirited commitment to literature. Eggers leads the trend-bucking San Francisco independent publisher McSweeney's, which offers books, magazines and a shape-shifting quarterly journal.

AS the best-known writer of his generation, Dave Eggers has attracted more than his share of criticism. He has been accused of pretension, self-indulgence, false modesty and flagrant postmodernism (whatever that might be). Most of these bombs have been lobbed by folks who are envious of Eggers -- his youth, his talent, his outsize ambition. Very few of his critics, at any rate, have bothered to identify Eggers for what he is: an unabashed humanist. "What Is the What" should change that.

I didn't know David Foster Wallace all that well. We met a couple of times, and once, I interviewed him onstage at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. I asked him on a few occasions if he'd review for the paper, but he said he'd had a bad experience and had sworn off reviewing for good. We shared a literary agent. In the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election, we spent an hour or so on the phone one afternoon discussing politics, which he followed with the rabid fascination of someone who, despite all better judgment, believed the process mattered, that somehow, somewhere, there was a candidate who might see us through.