Dave Eggers: Contrapposto, Craft, and the Case Against AI

Dave Eggers joins us to discuss his 14th novel, Contrapposto, a six-decade love story between childhood friends Cricket and Olympia, illustrated with his own drawings. Eggers traces the book's twenty-year gestation, the moment Olympia's character unlocked its structure, and why he gave Cricket his own boyhood fantasy of being "apprenticed" as a young artist. The conversation ranges widely: the decline of art-school access and the pier-side art collective he's launched in San Francisco; his literacy nonprofit 826 Valencia and its typewriter-obsessed students; and a candid, sometimes fiery take on AI's effect on writing, translation, and education, including an anecdote from his visit to OpenAI's offices. 

Buy Contrapposto: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/contrapposto-3

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Dave Eggers is the author of many books for adults and kids. He’s the founder of McSweeney's and the co-founder of 826 Valencia, and the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he was recently awarded the Newbery Medal for his all-ages book, The Eyes & the Impossible.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

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