Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

A Best Book of the Year: NPR and Boston Globe

Finally a novel that puts the pissed back into epistolary.

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.

Julie Schumacher is the author of Delacorte Press's The Book of One Hundred Truths, The Chain Letter, and Grass Angel, which was a PEN Center USA Literary Award Finalist for Children's Fiction. She has also written a number of short stories and two adult volumes, including The Body Is Water, which was a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Prize for First Fiction and was named an ALA Notable Book of the Year. Julie Schumacher is the director of the University of Minnesota's creative writing program and an English professor. She resides in St. Louis with her husband and two daughters.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385538138
ISBN 10	0385538138
Title	Dear Committee Members
Author	Julie Schumacher
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Doubleday Books
Year published	2014-08-19
Number of pages	180
Prizes	Winner of Thurber Prize for American Humor 2015, Winner of Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award (Fiction) 2015
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.