Andrew Geyer
Andrew Geyer is a Texan by birth but a South Carolinian by choice. A native of Austin, Geyer grew up on a nearby ranch dreaming of a career at NASA, but upon attending the University of Texas on an Aerospace Engineering scholarship, he found he “couldn’t do the math.” And so, on the advice of an English professor, he took a creative writing course that “changed my life.” In 1989, he began work on his MFA at the University of South Carolina, studying under William Price Fox (inducted 2010) and James Dickey (1986), and since then has considered the Palmetto State his home. Indeed, his master’s thesis became the novel Dixie Fish (2011), about a Texas ranch boy who migrates to Columbia, SC in search of nirvana. He returned to Texas long enough to complete his Ph.D. in English at Texas Tech University, but in 2008 accepted a position at the University of South Carolina Aiken, where he is now chair of the English Department and was recently named a Breakthrough Rising Star by the University of South Carolina system.
Geyer’s first collection Whispers in Dust and Bone (2003), is a product of his extensive peregrinations: he has traveled on four continents and across much of the United States. Winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a silver medalist in Foreword magazine’s Book of the Year Awards, Whispers in Dust and Bone follows its characters from Texas to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, a dig site in Peru, the Amazon River and, eventually, South Carolina. In his most recent collection, Lesser Mountains (2019), he returns to his small-town Texas roots.
In his other work, Geyer continues to draw from his travels. In the novel Meeting The Dead (2007), a young Texan finds himself on a journey of discovery in Peru. In Siren Songs From the Heart of Austin (2010), the Aqua Vitae Cafe is the hub of a narrative wheel of stories connecting characters in the desert southwest and Central America.
Geyer has also co-authored the collections Dancing on Barbed Wire (2018) and Texas 5X5 (2014) and a novel, Parallel Hours (2017). With Tom Mack, he edited A Shared Voice: A Tapestry of Tales (2013), which pairs stories by South Carolina and Texas authors. He has also published several dozen stories and a raft of reviews and literary biographies, is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and a Pushcart Prize nominee, and serves as fiction editor for the Concho River Review.
-- Jon Tuttle
Geyer’s first collection Whispers in Dust and Bone (2003), is a product of his extensive peregrinations: he has traveled on four continents and across much of the United States. Winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a silver medalist in Foreword magazine’s Book of the Year Awards, Whispers in Dust and Bone follows its characters from Texas to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, a dig site in Peru, the Amazon River and, eventually, South Carolina. In his most recent collection, Lesser Mountains (2019), he returns to his small-town Texas roots.
In his other work, Geyer continues to draw from his travels. In the novel Meeting The Dead (2007), a young Texan finds himself on a journey of discovery in Peru. In Siren Songs From the Heart of Austin (2010), the Aqua Vitae Cafe is the hub of a narrative wheel of stories connecting characters in the desert southwest and Central America.
Geyer has also co-authored the collections Dancing on Barbed Wire (2018) and Texas 5X5 (2014) and a novel, Parallel Hours (2017). With Tom Mack, he edited A Shared Voice: A Tapestry of Tales (2013), which pairs stories by South Carolina and Texas authors. He has also published several dozen stories and a raft of reviews and literary biographies, is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and a Pushcart Prize nominee, and serves as fiction editor for the Concho River Review.
-- Jon Tuttle
