Video & Audio

UCLA Radio interview

Postcards from SoCal: Time Travel and Tutoring

Dave Eggers's TED Prize acceptance speech

826 National video

"What’s Left Behind on the Journey North?" By Esperanza Mendez on NPR

Ayala Ben-Yehuda’s NPR story on Rhythm of the Chain (4:28; requires RealAudio)

Visit our YouTube page for more videos

"A Heartwarming Work of Serious Fun"
By Cathy Curtis
MSN.com City Guides
February 14, 2009

"In the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, home to urban creatives and immigrant Latino families, a storefront displaying a life-sized robot greeting a caveman could be mistaken for just another vintage clothing store."

"Dear Sir Obama: Presidential Advice"
By Jory John
The New York Times
January 16, 2009

"For the (826) students, the election of Barack Obama had overturned their world... We decided to channel this energy into a writing assignment. We asked (them) to offer their thoughts, hopes and advice to Mr. Obama in handwritten letters (many of which came with drawings). Here is the result of their work."

"'Frankenstein' writer back, sort of"
By Mindy Farabee
Los Angeles Times
October 3, 2008

"'Frankenstein' author Mary Shelley has made a rare Los Angeles appearance. On Sept. 26, some 150-odd years after her demise, she dropped by 826LA's Time Travel Mart in Echo Park -- that Sunset Boulevard purveyor of leg warmers, bottled 'robot emotions' and soon a fragrance timeline (a whiff of history from caveman to Studio 54) -- as part of the Dead Authors series to report back from beyond."

"Best Writer’s Block Party: 826LA East"
By Erica Zora Wrightson
LA Weekly
October 2, 2008

"The Echo Park Time Travel Mart on Sunset Boulevard is not what it seems. A sign across the otherwise unremarkable building reads: 'Whenever You Are, We’re Already Then.'"

"Dave Eggers’ literacy efforts garner award"
By Carolyn Kellogg
Los Angeles Times
October 24, 2007

"'I think Dave has been a model of somebody wise enough to do good, other-centered things with his good fortune,' says author George Saunders, recipient of a 2006 MacArthur Fellowship. 'And the 826 centers strike me as being so right-hearted and efficient, just in terms of teaching kids about the importance of the word in our culture.'"

"Their ‘final’ is a beginning for young authors"
By James Ricci
Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2007

"'But when we hooked up with 826LA, they said, 'Hey, if your students come up with a book, we'll publish it for you,' Cometa said."

"Reading, writing, robots"
By Steffie Nelson
Los Angeles Times
December 31, 2007

"At the grand opening of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart on Dec. 15, the Robot Emotions were going like hot cakes (happiness and schadenfreude were the top sellers). The mystery product Chubble, on the other hand, available in more than 50 different varieties, wasn't really moving. A worker dressed like a cowboy shrugged. 'It's really hot in the future.'"

"Conquest of the Word Masters"
By Diane Dunkelberger
Benefit Magazine
November/December 2006

"Barnett, who is 826 LA's program director as well as one of the store's product developers, seems unconcerned about whether kids will get the shampoo's allusion to Rasputin, the late nineteenth century Russian mystic. These days, what is a more pressing concern for Barnett is getting the Time Travel Mart's lease signed."

"You missed 'Explained' for a movie?"
By James Verini
Los Angeles Times
June 17, 2006

"The show was the latest in "The World Explained," a series being put on by the L.A. contingent of the magazine and publishing mini-empire McSweeney's, to benefit their after-school tutoring facility, called 826."

"Helping children get the picture"
By Cynthia Dea
Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2006

"AT first, 12-year-old Tomas Medina dreaded the assignment that introduced him to the world of photography. "I thought it would be boring. I thought it was going to be more work," says Medina, a seventh-grader at Mark Twain Middle School in Venice. "I thought the pictures weren't that interesting until I did the project. I learned that it's hard to get a good picture, and it changed the way I looked at the world."

"Jackson gets a lesson in teamwork"
By Kevin Ding
The Orange County Register
Sunday, June 26, 2005

Phil Jackson has one last thing from his unemployed life to which he must attend, a date he set six weeks ago and will now keep. . . He became mentor to a group of Animo Inglewood students, connecting with them through 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Venice, and giving them the theme for a book toward which each student (some excerpted below) would contribute an essay.

"I Wonder Why All Kids Don't Go to 826"
By Josh Kun
LA Weekly
June 3-9, 2005

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Adriel is announcing his new country in the bustling second-floor idea den that is 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center tucked into the back of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) on Venice Boulevard.
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"Class Action"
By Tami Mnoian
Flaunt Magazine
April 2005

Community is not dead in Los Angeles — it’s thriving. Case in point: the volunteer rush to help McSweeney’s publisher Dave Eggers renovate 826LA, the third installment of his creative writing think tank for kids. ¶ San Francisco, 2002: Eggers opens a tutoring center for kids that fulfills an overlooked need in America’s education system.

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A Heartfelt Work of Staggering Good
By Lynell George
The Los Angeles Times
Monday, December 6, 2004

. . .Eggers has landed in L.A. for a couple of sure-to-be-sleep-deprived days. Not for a reading or a panel discussion but to shake a few trees. For matters important enough to don a dark blazer over faded jeans and transform himself from idiosyncratic author-editor to passionate pitchman.

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