Julie Schumacher

Julie Schumacher is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, and academic. She is a Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota. Schumacher specializes in creative writing, contemporary fiction, and children's literature.

Education Schumacher received her bachelor's degree in Spanish and Latin American studies from Oberlin College in 1981. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Cornell University in 1986.

Career Following her MFA, Schumacher was an assistant professor at St. Olaf College and other academic institutions before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota as an associate professor in 1996. She was promoted to professor in 2008, and became Regents Professor in 2021. and five books for young readers: The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, The Chain Letter, Black Box, The Book of One Hundred Truths, and Grass Angel.

Schumacher is also the author of the national best-selling epistolary novel, Dear Committee Members, for which she was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor. She was the first woman to win the Thurber Prize. An NPR review noted that the novel "deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage."

In 2018, Schumacher published The Shakespeare Requirement, which Kirkus Reviews called a "satire that oscillates between genuine compassion and scathing mockery with admirable dexterity." The New Yorker described the novel as a "sad-professor satire that burns with moral anger."

Awards and honors 1995 - PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel finalist, The Body Is Water 1995 - ALA Notable Book of the Year, The Body Is Water 2000 - Loft McKnight Award in Creative Prose 2008 - University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education Distinguished Educator Award 2011 - Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency 2021 - University of Minnesota Regents Professorship