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. 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.