Winifred Temple Schumacher (right) was born in Staten Island in 1923. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan and in 1944 married Frederick Schumacher. They were married 66 years and raised five daughters--in whom they instilled their love of reading. One, Julie Schumacher, grew up to be the author of seven novels (thus far) and a professor in our Creative Writing Program. After Winifred died last year, Professor Schumacher took the extraordinary step of honoring her quietly "generous and cheerful" mother by establishing a fellowship in her name.The Winifred Fellowship in Creative Writing - Fiction provides support to third-year MFA students focusing on fiction. (Join Professor Schumacher in supporting fiction writers by making a gift here.) We asked Professor Schumacher (left) more about her mother's influence on her life as a writer.
Did your mother have a favorite book (or genre)?She loved books in general but tended toward fiction, biography, and memoir. She read several books a week, veering, say, from Carl Hiaasen to Hilary Mantel to Jane Austen within a matter of days. The best way to persuade her to put down a book was to offer a game of Scrabble or anagrams.
How did she encourage you on your path to becoming a writer?
I had trouble learning to read as a child, and I remember sitting on the couch next to my mother trying to decipher what seemed to me an impossible code. Everyone in my family read, though, and read a lot. We spent part of our summers on the New Jersey shore, and after dinner--we had no TV--we played word games or read books. (We didn't actually own a lot of books, because my mother firmly believed in the public library.) That was the best part of my childhood, and I still think that reading next to the ocean is a sort of nirvana.
What inspired you to create the Winifred Fellowship in Creative Writing?
My mother was a modest, private person, more of a listener than a talker, and she never sought recognition. I only wish I had thought to tell her about the idea of creating a fellowship in her name before she died. I think it would have both surprised and pleased her.
What are your hopes for the fellowship?
I work most often with MFA students who are writing fiction, and I wanted to give those students a bit of a boost. I so fervently believe in our Creative Writing Program--in the time and the sense of community and the mentorship it offers to up-and-coming writers--and I hope this fellowship and others like it will help support literature and the arts at the U. I would love to see more funding and investment in the arts.
The program has been graduating impressive fiction writers, who are publishing award-winning and noted works (from Matt Burgess to Amanda Coplin, Ethan Rutherford to Swati Avasthi). What's the next big book from an alum?
Kathleen Glasgow--MFA graduate and former Creative Writing Program coordinator--just sold her first novel in a major two-book deal, and Delacorte will be doing a publicity push on it next year. Others will follow.
