Author Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng to visit UW-Madison

Award-winning author Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng will visit the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus on Wednesday, Nov. 4, as part of the Humanities Without Boundaries series.

The event, sponsored by the university’s Center for the Humanities, will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Room L160 of the Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave. It is free and open to the public.

Eggers is the author of six previous books, including his most recent, “Zeitoun,” a nonfiction account of a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina and “What Is the What,” a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award.

That book, about Deng, a survivor of the civil war in southern Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Deng and dedicated to building secondary schools in southern Sudan.

Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine (The Believer) and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries.

Deng was born in southern Sudan in the village of Marial Bai. He fled Sudan in the late 1980s during the civil war, when his village was destroyed by murahaleen — the same type of militia that currently terrorize Darfur.

Deng grew up in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps, where he worked for the UNHCR as a social advocate and reproductive health educator. In 2001 he resettled to Atlanta.

Deng has toured the U.S. and Europe speaking about his life in Sudan, his experience as a refugee and his collaboration with Eggers on “What Is the What,” the novelized version of Deng’s life story.

As a leader in the Sudanese diaspora, Deng advocates for the universal right to education and the freedom of his people in Sudan. In 2006, Deng and Eggers established the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation to help rebuild Sudanese communities by increasing access to educational opportunities.

The foundation has constructed the first high school in Valentino’s region of southern Sudan, which opened in May, and plans for a library, teacher-training college, and community center are currently under way. For more information on the foundation, visit http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org.