The Library at MAF Presents: Geoff Dyer in conversation with David St. John

• May 3, 2025 | 4pm

A very special discussion between writer Geoff Dyer and poet David St. John will take place in the MAF Library at 4PM reflecting on Dyer’s decade as Writer in Residence at USC. During this highly productive period Dyer wrote White Sands (2016), The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand (2018) and The Last Days of Roger Federer and other endings (2022) amongst others.

Geoff Dyer’s many books include But Beautiful (about jazz),  Out of Sheer Rage (about D H Lawrence),  a history of photography, The Ongoing Moment,   the novel  Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi  and,  most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer  (hardly about tennis at all).  A  member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, his books have been translated into  twenty-four  languages. For the last ten years he has been a Writer in Residence  at USC.  A new book Homework  ( memoir) will be published   in  June 2025 by FSG.

David St. John has received The Rome Prize Fellowship and The Award in Literature, both from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the O. B. Hardison Prize from The Folger Shakespeare Library; and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of many collections of poetry, most recently, Prayer For My Daughter, as well as a prose collection entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. David St. John has written two libretti: for the opera based on his book, The Face, by Donald Crockett, and the choral symphony, The Shore, by Frank Ticheli. He was also co-editor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry. A past Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, David St. John is University Professor and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of Southern California.

*Included in GA tickets at 4 PM*