Like Professor Stillman in his novel RETURN TO BAGHDAD, Greg Bayer was a philosophy prof, mostly at St. John’s College, Santa Fe; while he's published many papers in academic journals, RETURN is his first real foray into fiction. Like Stillman, he worked at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2006-7, as Fulbright program manager, helping to send many Iraqi scholars to study in America. Though their stories diverge, he and Stillman share doubts about the academic life, a passion for classic films, a love-hate relation with Nietzsche, and (perhaps) a tendency toward excess rumination.
