Georgie Anne Geyer

         Georgie Anne Geyer was born on April 2, 1935 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Northwestern University’s journalism school in 1956 and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Vienna. Geyer got a job with the Chicago Daily News in 1959. While working there she longed to report on news from all around the world and become a foreign correspondent. Geyer eventually received a grant to report from Peru where her interviews with seemingly inaccessible people gained attention. She went on to write from other Latin American countries such as the Dominican Republic during the revolution and Cuba where she interviewed Prime Minister Fidel Castro. After reporting from Latin American countries, Geyer went to the Soviet Union and then the Middle East where she became the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein. Geyer also wrote a controversial biography on Fidel Castro and was subsequently banned from Cuba. In 1974 Geyer left the Chicago Daily News and moved to Washington, D.C. to become a syndicated columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate. Geyer has experienced dangerous situations due to her style of reporting from unsafe areas. She was arrested and deported in Angola for not revealing sources of information and also received a death threat from Guatemala’s White Hand death squad. These incidents did not stop her from traveling and reporting from all around the world. Her writings as a foreign correspondent reach at least 100 different newspapers and she is the author of 10 books. She fluently speaks five different languages and is widely known today for her in-depth reporting style on international affairs and for her interviews with numerous world leaders including several former U.S. presidents.