The English Experience A Novel

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR • PEOPLE MAGAZINE’S BOOK OF THE WEEK • Beleaguered Professor Jason Fitger chaperones Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” to London and beyond, with eleven undergrads in tow • The hilarious and heartfelt conclusion to the Dear Committee Members trilogy.

“Wise and hilarious and heartbreaking.”—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls

"The perfect back-to-school novel for cynics…Entertaining and bittersweet.” —The Washington Post


The bestselling author of Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement completes her hilarious trilogy of academic mishap by chronicling the beleaguered Professor Fitger as he chaperones Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” to London and beyond, with eleven undergrads in tow. 

Among his charges are a claustrophobe with a juvenile detention record, a student who erroneously believes he is headed for the Caribbean, a pair of unreconciled lovers, a set of undifferentiated twins, and one young woman who has never been away from her cat before. 

Through a sea of troubles—personal, institutional, and international—the gimlet-eyed, acid-tongued Fitger strives to navigate safe passage for all concerned, revealing much about the essential need for human connection and the sometimes surprising places in which it is found.

JULIE SCHUMACHER grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Oberlin College and Cornell University, where she earned her MFA. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her 2014 novel, Dear Committee Members, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor; she is the first woman to have been so honored. She lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota.