Community of Writers Podcasts
Stay abreast of our summer workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction and Memoir by following to hear panels, and craft talks from esteemed agents and editors. Later in the year we will be adding selected craft talks from previous summers.
Year-round, we also host Bibliocracy Radio , a weekly half-hour books discussion and interview program hosted by Santa Monica Review editor Andrew Tonkovich featuring writers of literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, memoir and cultural criticism.
Community of Writers Podcasts
Bibliocracy Episode 9: Julie Schumacher on The English Experience
My guest today is Julie Schumacher, who will talk about and read from the final book in a trilogy which has earned its place on the shelf with other favorites in the weird, wonderful genre of academic satire, right next to Richard Russo’s Straight Man and, as it happens her first two novels chronicling the cheerfully doomed life of one Professor Jason Fitger, a divorced professor of English and creative writing, stalled-out writer and all-around sour puss…if for good reason, or at least good enough, by which we mean bad. The English Experience, out from Doubleday, follows Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement, in which Schumacher engages and exploits and critiques nearly every possible --- and impossible --- complication or challenge facing our compromised but, in his way, committed hero. Except, hilariously,for a travel abroad program sponsored by Payne University, pronounced “pain,” for which Fitger, exactly the wrong (!) faculty member, is chosen (meaning coerced into) as teacher and chaperone. Julie Schumacher is the author of three Jason Fitger novels, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and author of fourth novel, The Body Is Water. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.
The views expressed in this program are those of its presenter and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the values of the Community of Writers or its Board of Directors.