Geoff Dyer

For the Australian painter, see Geoffrey Dyer.

Geoff Dyer
Dyer at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Born	(1958-06-05) 5 June 1958 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England
Alma mater	Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Geoff Dyer (born 5 June 1958) is an English writer. He has authored a number of novels and books of non-fiction, which have won literary awards and been translated into 24 languages. Kathryn Schulz, writing in New York, described him as "one of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and one of our most original writers".

Personal background

Dyer was born and raised in Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a sheet metal worker father and a school dinner lady mother. He was educated at the local grammar school and won a scholarship to study English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is married to Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at Saatchi Art, Los Angeles. In March 2014, Dyer said he had had a minor stroke earlier in the year, shortly after moving to live in Venice, Los Angeles.

Writing career

Dyer is the author of four novels: The Colour of Memory; The Search; Paris Trance; and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. He wrote a critical study of John Berger – Ways of Telling – and two collections of essays: Anglo-English Attitudes and Working the Room. A selection of essays from these collections entitled Otherwise Known as the Human Condition was published in the U.S. in April 2011 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Dyer wrote seven genre-defying titles: But Beautiful (on jazz); The Missing of the Somme (on the memorialization of the First World War); Out of Sheer Rage (about D. H. Lawrence); Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It; The Ongoing Moment (on photography); Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker); and Broadsword Calling Danny Boy (about Brian G. Hutton's 1968 film Where Eagles Dare). In 2019, Out of Sheer Rage was listed by Slate as one of the 50 greatest nonfiction works of the past 25 years. He is the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney.

One of his most recent books, Another Great Day at Sea (2014), chronicles Dyer's experiences on the USS George H.W. Bush, where he was writer-in-residence for two weeks. It has been described by David Finkel, author of Thank You for Your Service, as "what we’ve all come to expect from Geoff Dyer—another great book. I loved everything about it. It’s brilliantly observed, beautifully written, incisive, funny, and filled with stirring truths about life and the value of service." Billy Collins, the former United States Poet Laureate and author of Aimless Love, said: "Geoff Dyer has managed to do again what he does best: insert himself into an exotic and demanding environment (sometimes, his own flat, but here, the violent wonders of an aircraft carrier) and file a report that mixes empathetic appreciation with dips into brilliant comic deflation. Welcome aboard the edifying and sometimes hilarious ship Dyer."

Dyer was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005. In 2014 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

In 2013 he served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. He now teaches in the PhD program at the University of Southern California.

Awards and honours

• 1992: Somerset Maugham Award winner for But Beautiful
• 1992: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize shortlisted for But Beautiful
• 1998: National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in Criticism for Out of Sheer Rage
• 2003: Lannan Literary Fellowship
• 2004: W H Smith Best Travel Book Award winner for Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It
• 2005: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2006: Winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• 2006: International Center of Photography (ICP) Infinity Award for Writing on photography for The Ongoing Moment
• 2009: GQ Writer of the Year Award
• 2009: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel for Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
• 2011: National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism winner for Otherwise Known as the Human Condition
• 2015: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction) valued at $150,000

Publications

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Books

• • U.S. edition:

External links

• Official website
• Geoff Dyer at British Council: Literature
• Geoff Dyer at the complete review
• "In conversation with ... Geoff Dyer" (15 November 2010, with podcast) – interview with Geoff Dyer about his 2010 collection of essays, Working The Room
• Geoff Dyer, The Art of Nonfiction No. 6 by Matthew Specktor in The Paris Review
• Interview with Dyer on Notebook on Cities and Culture