Our Keynote Speakers And Special Guests
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the award-winning, best-selling author, publisher, and philanthropist Dave Eggers is coming to DFWCon! Dave will be joined on stage by local author and journalist Michael Merschel to discuss the writing journey, the power of creating art, and Dave’s extensive body of work.

Dave Eggers
Author
Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them: The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired over 70 similar organizations worldwide. Eggers is winner of the American Book Award, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Michael Merschel
Keynote Moderator
Michael Merschel's three decades in journalism included 12 years as books editor for The Dallas Morning News. He’s conducted onstage interviews with authors such as Khaled Hosseini, Susan Orlean, Kwame Alexander and Fredrik Backman. Mike also wrote the novel Revenge of the Star Survivors, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ award for best middle-grade book in 2018. Before that, he contributed to public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and composed an out-of-office reply that was mentioned in The New York Times and featured on NPR.
