Rick Gekoski

Richard Abraham (“Rick”) Gekoski (born 25 August 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA) is a writer, broadcaster, rare book dealer and a former member of the English Department at Warwick University.

Early life and education

Gekoski was raised in Alexandria, Virginia, where his father, Bernard, worked as an attorney for the Rural Electrification Authority, and his mother Edith was a social worker. He has a sister, Ruth Greenberg. The family moved to Huntington, Long Island in 1954. He graduated from Huntington High School in 1962, and received his B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 where he served as the Chairman of the newly formed Student Committee on Undergraduate Education.[1] He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1965. He subsequently took a B.Phil and D.Phil in English at Oxford University, where he attended Merton College, Oxford and won a tennis blue.

Academic career

In 1971 Gekoski joined the English Department at Warwick University, where he was joint convenor of the B.A. degree in Philosophy and Literature, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1980, and served for some years as Chairman of the Faculty of Arts. He resigned from the Department in 1984 to open a business as a rare book dealer.

Rare books

The Guardian put Gekoski's book-selling activities succinctly: “Gekoski likes to be around a better class of book than the rest of us and by skill, luck and chutzpah has managed to.” He has founded two private presses, The Sixth Chamber Press and (with T.G. Rosenthal) The Bridgewater Press, which issue limited editions by well-known writers.

Writer

Rick Gekoski has published a quartet of books which trace his major enthusiasms: football, book dealing,reading, and art. Staying Up, Tolkien’s Gown, Outside of a Dog and"Lost, Stolen or Shredded" are written in an approachable personal voice, and combine high spirits with wry honesty and modest erudition. Colm Toibin has called their author “a master story teller,” and Tatler described him as the Bill Bryson of the book world. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian on-line Book section, through his column "Finger on the Page," which covers topics from the world of books, including reading, writing, teaching and book-selling.

Broadcaster

Gekoski regularly appears on radio as a guest commentator on topics relating to rare books and the book trade. He has written and produced three series of Rare Books, Rare People for BBC Radio 4 – called “one of the gems of Radio 4” by critic Gillian Reynolds - which he followed with two series of Lost, Stolen, or Shredded: The History of Some Missing Works of Art also for Radio 4.

Personal life

In 2005 Gekoski was a Man Booker Prize judge, and a strong advocate for John Banville’s The Sea, which was a controversial winner. He was Chair of Judges for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded to Philip Roth.

He now divides his time between dealing, broadcasting, writing and lecturing. He teaches Creative Non-Fiction for the Arvon Foundation, and sits on their Development Board. He is a Trustee and Member of the Board of English PEN.

Gekoski and his wife Belinda Kitchin, share a mews house in The Hyde Park Estate, London, a converted Wesleyan Chapel in the New Forest, and a house in the Tuki Tuki Valley, New Zealand. He has two children by a previous marriage. In 2008 Rick Gekoski became a British Citizen (as well as an American one) remarking that he now felt “equally ill at ease in both cultures.”

Books

References

External links

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