Geoff Dyer

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Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer 2023 Texas Book Festival.jpg
Dyer at the 2023 Texas Book Festival
Born1958 (age 6566)
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England
Alma mater Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Notable awards Somerset Maugham Award
1992 But Beautiful

Best Travel Book Award
2004 Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do ItWH Smith Literary Award
Best Comic Novel – Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
2009 Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism
2011 Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Contents

Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction)
2015

Geoff Dyer (born 1958) [1] is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards.

Early life and education

Dyer was born and raised in Cheltenham, England, as the only child of a sheet metal worker father and a school dinner lady mother. [2] He was educated at the local grammar school and won a scholarship to study English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After graduating from Oxford, he claimed unemployment benefits, and moved into a property in Brixton with other former Oxford students. He credits this period with teaching him the craft of writing. [3]

Writing career

His debut novel, The Colour of Memory, is set in Brixton in the 1980s, the decade that Dyer lived there. The novel has been described as a "fictionalization of Dyer's 20s". [4]

Dyer is the author of the following novels: The Colour of Memory (1989), The Search (1993), Paris Trance (1998) and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2009). He wrote a critical study of John BergerWays 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. [ citation needed ]

Dyer has written the following non-fiction titles: But Beautiful (on jazz); The Missing of the Somme (on the memorialisation 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. [5] 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 . [ citation needed ]

His 2014 book Another Great Day at Sea chronicles Dyer's experiences on the USS George H.W. Bush, where he was writer-in-residence for two weeks. [ citation needed ]

Dyer was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005. [6] In 2014, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. [ citation needed ]

In 2013, he was the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor [7] at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. He now teaches in the PhD program at the University of Southern California. [ citation needed ]

Personal life

Dyer in 2015. Geoff Dyer 2015.jpg
Dyer in 2015.

Dyer is married to Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at Saatchi Art, Los Angeles. He lives in Venice, California. [8] In March 2014, Dyer said he had had a minor stroke earlier in the year, shortly after moving to live in Venice. [9]

Awards and honours

Publications

Books

Critical studies and reviews of Dyer's work

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References

  1. "Geoff Dyer - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 20 September 2023.
  2. McMahon, James (8 May 2021). "Geoff Dyer: 'I am what you might describe as chippy'". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
  3. "Gissa job! Writers on the dole". The Guardian . August 2015.
  4. Teicher, Jordan (11 June 2014). "The One and Only Geoff Dyer". LA Review of Books. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
  5. Miller, Dan Kois, Laura (18 November 2019). "The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 3 December 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Royal Society of Literature: Current RSL Fellows (Accessdate 03-06-13) Archived 2 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  7. "Geoff Dyer". uiowa.edu.
  8. Geoff Dyer (29 March 2009). "I am What I am: Geoff Dyer". The Sunday Times . London. Retrieved 9 May 2011.[ dead link ]
  9. Dyer, Geoff Diary London Review of Books, Vol. 36 No. 7 – 3 April 2014.
  10. "Books / The prize winners of 1992". The Independent. 19 December 1992. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  11. "Society of Authors' Awards". societyofauthors.org. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  12. 1 2 "Finalist citation for National Book Critics Circle Award". National Book Critics Circle. 1998. Archived from the original on 18 October 2015. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  13. "Lannan Foundation". Lannan Foundation. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  14. Ezard, John (14 January 2004). "Rowling set to win first adult book prize". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  15. 1 2 "Up Front". The New York Times. 28 October 2007. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  16. "Royal Society of Literature » Geoff Dyer". rsliterature.org. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  17. "2006 Infinity Award: Writing". International Center of Photography. 28 April 2006. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  18. Bilmes, Alex (2 September 2009). "Geoff Dyer: Writer of the Year". British GQ. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  19. Flood, Alison (29 May 2009). "Geoff Dyer wins Wodehouse prize for comic fiction". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 May 2019.
  20. "Prize Citation for Edmund de Waal". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. 24 February 2015. Archived from the original on 26 February 2015. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
  21. On Tarkovsky's movie Stalker
  22. O'Hagan, Sean (12 March 2018). "The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand by Geoff Dyer review – supremo of the 60s sidewalk". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  23. "Nonfiction Book Review: The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 (272p) ISBN 978-0-374-60556-8". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 24 February 2022.