Geoffrey
Becker
Professor
Tel: 410-704-5196
Bio
Geoffrey Becker is the author of Dangerous Men, a collection of short stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and Bluestown, a novel (St. Martin’s Press, 1996). His story, “Black Elvis,” was selected by E.L. Doctorow for The Best American Short Stories, 2000. Other awards he has received include the Nelson Algren Prize from the Chicago Tribune, a James Michener Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, a Heekin Foundation fellowship, two Maryland Arts Council Awards, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for best first book of fiction. His most recent work has appeared Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and The Antioch Review. He is currently finishing a new novel.
Born in Boston, Geoff grew up in Princeton, NJ, and attended Colby College in Maine, where he majored in English, and also studied music. In the early ‘80s, he lived in Brooklyn, NY, where he played guitar and performed both solo and in various bands at venues including The Lone Star Café, O’Lunney’s Country Music City, and the Eagle Tavern. Later, he earned an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was also active on the local music scene. In the years between college and graduate school, in addition to working as a musician, he also waited tables, sold record albums, was a customer service rep. for a rock-and-roll effects manufacturer, taught guitar, and prepared more than three thousand personal income tax returns. He has been a visiting professor of creative writing at Emory University, The Colorado College, Colgate University and the University of Arizona. He currently teaches at Towson University, where he also directs the graduate program in professional writing, and in the low-residency MFA program of Queens University, Charlotte. He is married to the painter, Nora Sturges, and they live in a row-house in Baltimore, MD, that he hopes someday to fill with wine.