We invited a well-known British writer, Geoff Dyer, to visit Azerbaijan in March 2005. The aim of the visit was to increase awareness of modern British literature amongst young Azerbaijanis and to provide a useful insights into what is currently happening in literature in the UK.
During his visit to Baku, the writer met with the public on 19 March at Khazar University’s Dunya Theatre. The author also ran two creative writing workshops - one for English language teachers of the Azerbaijan University of Languages on March 17, and the second one for the winners of the Road writing competition on 18 March. The Road competition was held in 2004 in Azerbaijan, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Georgia. The competition aimed to collect the best pieces of writing from these countries.
was born in Cheltenham in 1958, and educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His first book, Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger, was published in 1986. His first novel was The Colour of Memory (1989), set in Brixton, south London, in the 1980s.
His non-fiction includes a book about jazz entitled But Beautiful (1991), the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award; The Missing of the Somme (1994), which was adapted for BBC Radio 3 and broadcast on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the battle of the Somme; a book about D. H. Lawrence entitled Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence (1997), which was short-listed for the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (USA) and a collection of essays, Anglo-English Attitudes: Essays, Reviews, Misadventures, 1984-99, published in 1999. He is also the author of three novels: Paris Trance, The Search and The Colour of Memory.
Geoff has travelled widely and lived in New York, Paris, Rome and New Orleans. He currently lives in London but spends much of his time wishing he lived in San Francisco.
