Georgie Anne Geyer

American journalist and foreign correspondent with the Chicago Daily News, a syndicated columnist, author, lecturer and educator, and television panelist and moderator. She has authored books on Latin America, the Middle East and the U.S.S.R. and wrote "Buying the Night Flight: The Autobiography of a Woman Foreign Correspondent," 1983, which is part of the Radcliffe series of lives of outstanding American women. One of her more recent books is "Guerilla Prince," a biography of Fidel Castro. Single, she enjoys piano, water-skiing, exploring archeological sites, and the study of cats and their history. Georgie Anne Geyer was the second of two children of a hard-working dairy-owner and his wife. At age four, she was taught to read and write by her mother, which instilled an early love for reading. She decided early that she wanted to be a journalist, and after graduating with honors from high school at age 16, she enrolled in Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, earning her B.S. in 1956 as well as a Fulbright scholarship in history to the University of Vienna. She learned to speak German there, and acquired a knowledge of Spanish, Portuguese and Russia. In 1959, Geyer joined the Chicago Daily News as society desk reporter, but within a year impressed her editor with her ability to make social events newsworthy. She was advanced to general assignment reporter on the city desk, and aspired to be a foreign correspondent. In 1964, she applied for and won a Seymour Berkson Foreign Assignment Grant. This enabled her to spend six months abroad, while continuing to work for the Daily News. She chose Latin America for its "deep subterranean affinity." In Peru, she learned Spanish and gradually discovered how to obtain information sources and how to interact with people in foreign countries so that she could explain different cultures to United States readers. Her dispatches were so well received in Chicago that she was sent to Santo Domingo in 1965 to cover the revolution of Rafael Trujillo. She focused on the view of the revolutionists by talking with their intellectual leader, Juan Bosch, then in hiding in Puerto Rico. Bosch became the first of a number of world leaders that Geyer interviewed. In 1966, she interviewed Cuba Premier Fidel Castro and also became the first American journalist to travel into the dangerous mountains of Guatemala to observe early guerrilla movements. Her coverage was published internally, and brought her professional recognition, including the Overseas Press Club Latin America Award in 1967. Beginning in 1964, Geyer started spending nine months of each year abroad on assignment. By 1974, she wanted to make a home for herself, and left her Chicago newspaper to become a columnist based in Washington, D. C. for the Los Angeles Time Syndicate. Since 1981, she has been a columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate alone, and she appears in newspapers nationwide. Her research and observations in the U.S.S.R. between 1967 and 1971 was related in her book, "The Young Russians," 1975. Her examination of Jewish-Arab relations made up much of her book, "The New 100 Years War," 1972. She has long been a panelist on public television’s "Washington Week in Review" and a questioner on "Meet the Press." She has also been a regular radio commentator for "Voice of America," and in 1979, began speaking tours in Africa, the Far East and Europe for the United States government’s International Communication agency to discuss American journalism with foreign journalists. In 1977, she was the Lyle M. Spencer Professor of Journalism at Syracuse University and in 1982 the Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Rollins College. Since 1981, she has been a trustee of American University. She holds honorary doctorates from Lake Forest College and Chicago State University and the Maria Moors Cabot Award of Columbia University. In 1973, she became the first Westerner to interview Saddam Hussein. She has also interviewed Yasser Arafat of the PLO, Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini among others. Throughout romantic relationships, Geyer has remained single and makes her home in Washington, D. C. Link to Wikipedia biography