Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer (born 1958) is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards. Dyer was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005.
Geoff Dyer
David Shankbone · CC BY 3.0
- Name
- Geoff Dyer
- Born
- 1958
- Birthplace
- Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England
- Education
- Corpus Christi College, Oxford
- Spouse
- Rebecca Wilson
- Awards
- Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction)
- Nationality
- United Kingdom.
- Occupation
- writer, journalist and novelist.
- Fields
- jazz.
- Known for
- But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz.
- Honours
- Somerset Maugham Award, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, E. M. Forster Award, Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Infinity Awards.
- Languages
- English.
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Documentary summary
Geoff Dyer (born 1958) is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards. Dyer was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005.
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Note VALÉORINE
Geoff Dyer (born 1958) is a British journalist, novelist and writer. The journalist was born in Cheltenham.
Geoff Dyer studied at Corpus Christi College. The journalist is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Royal Society of Literature and lived in Cheltenham and Venice. Geoff Dyer is active in jazz.
Works include But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz. Genres include essay. Languages used include English. The journalist received Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Infinity Awards, among others.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
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Authority files
museum · 7f8b9eae-1a41-44b6-8595-7444ef8f6614 · wikidata · Q1502891 · wikipedia · Geoff Dyer
In this article
Biography
Biography
Geoff Dyer studied at Corpus Christi College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is jazz. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are essay. Residence is recorded at Cheltenham and Venice. Works named in the authority record are But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz. Distinctions recorded are Somerset Maugham Award, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, E. Forster Award and Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes.

Author Geoff Dyer at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, United States.
Larry D. Moore

Tim Parks, Ian Jack, Geoff Dyer and Dervla Murphy at the Shakespeare and Co. Travel in Words symposium.
Fred Benenson from NYC, USA · Tim Parks, Ian Jack, Geoff Dyer, Dervla Murphy
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Geoff Dyer • Honorific Suffix — FRSL • Born — 1958 • Birthplace — Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England • Education — Corpus Christi College, Oxford • Spouse — Rebecca Wilson • Awards — Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction) • Website — geoffdyer.com
Early life and education
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. 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.
Writing career
Writing career
Dyer's debut novel, The Colour of Memory, is set in Brixton in the 1980s, the decade that he lived there. The novel has been described as a "fictionalization of Dyer's 20s". 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 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 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: Wrestling with 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. Dyer's 2014 book Another Great Day at Sea chronicles his experiences on the George H.W. Bush, where he was writer-in-residence for two weeks.
Academic career
Academic career
In 2013, he was 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.
Personal life
Personal life
• Illustration — Dyer in 2015. Dyer is married to Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at Saatchi Art, Los Angeles. He lives in Venice, California. In March 2014, Dyer said he had had a minor stroke earlier in the year, shortly after moving to live in Venice.
Critical studies and reviews of Dyer's work
Critical studies and reviews of Dyer's work
*
Career and activity
Career and activity
Geoff Dyer worked in jazz. He belonged to Royal Society of Literature and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He worked at Cheltenham and Venice.
Identity
Identity
Geoff Dyer is recorded as writer, journalist and novelist.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1958
Geoff Dyer born at Cheltenham.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Cheltenham and Venice.
Residences
Cheltenham.
Birth place
Books
* * * * * * • U.S. edition: * * * * * * * * * * * • * * * * * * * *
Recognition and collections
Where the work is held
Recognition and collections
Geoff Dyer received Somerset Maugham Award, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, E. Forster Award, Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Infinity Awards.
Documents and archives
Primary material
Documents and archives
Institutional database
- MusicBrainz artist record for Geoff Dyer
Scholarly · MetaBrainz Foundation
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q1502891: Geoff Dyer
Scholarly · Wikimedia Foundation
reference work
- “Geoff Dyer”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
Awards and honours
• 1992: Somerset Maugham Award winner for But Beautiful • 1998: National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism finalist for Out of Sheer Rage • 2003: Lannan Literary Fellowship • 2004: WH 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: 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 • 2014: Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. • 2015: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Non-Fiction) valued at $150,000
Literature
Literature
Literature
On not having a career, The Yale Review, 2022.
6 Geoff Dyer, from Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. Geoff Dyer’s Ways of Seeing, CoSMO, 2018
Scholarly footprint
Literature
Scholarly footprint
A count of publications is evidence of attention, not of standing, and is given here only as a measure.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Geoff Dyer - National Portrait Gallery. www.npg.org.uk.
- 2.Royal Society of Literature: Current RSL Fellows (Accessdate 03-06-13)
- 3.McMahon, James. Geoff Dyer: 'I am what you might describe as chippy'. The Guardian. 2021-05-08.
- 4.Gissa job! Writers on the dole. The Guardian. 1 August 2015.
- 5.Teicher, Jordan. The One and Only Geoff Dyer. LA Review of Books. 2014-06-11.
- 6.Kois, Dan. The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years. Slate Magazine. 2019-11-18.
- 7.Geoff Dyer. uiowa.edu.
- 8.Geoff Dyer. I am What I am: Geoff Dyer. The Sunday Times. September 2024.
- 9.Dyer, Geoff. Diary: Why Cn't I See you?. London Review of Books. 36. 7. 3 April 2014.
- 10.Baker, Pippa. Books / The prize winners of 1992. The Independent. 19 December 1992.
- 11.Society of Authors' Awards. societyofauthors.org.
- 12.National Book Critics Circle. Finalist citation for National Book Critics Circle Award. 1998.
- 13.Lannan Foundation.
- 14.Ezard, John. Rowling set to win first adult book prize. The Guardian. 14 January 2004. 0261-3077.
- 15.Up Front. The New York Times. 28 October 2007. 0362-4331.
- 16.International Center of Photography. 2006 Infinity Award: Writing. 28 April 2006.
- 17.Bilmes, Alex. Geoff Dyer: Writer of the Year. British GQ. 2 September 2009.
- 18.Flood, Alison. Geoff Dyer wins Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. The Guardian. 29 May 2009. 0261-3077.
- 19.Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. Prize Citation for Edmund de Waal. 24 February 2015.
- 20.On Tarkovsky's movie Stalker
- 21.O'Hagan, Sean. The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand by Geoff Dyer review – supremo of the 60s sidewalk. The Guardian. 12 March 2018.
- 22.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.
- 23.Morrison, Blake. Homework by Geoff Dyer review – coming of age in 70s England. The Guardian. 2025-05-27. 0261-3077.
- 24.Lewis, Roger. Childhood in the 1960s? Here's why it was positively Victorian. The Telegraph. 2025-05-26. 0307-1235.
- 25.Quinn, Anthony. Homework by Geoff Dyer — Cheltenham's answer to Proust. Financial Times. 2025-05-14.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
Institutional database
MusicBrainz artist record for Geoff DyerMetaBrainz Foundation
VerifiedInstitutional database
Wikidata, structured authority record Q1502891: Geoff DyerWikimedia Foundation
Verifiedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 15 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
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