TCR Story of the Month for July: "On a Foggy Night in Paris, A Bullet Shot Randomly Into the Air is Bound to be Intercepted by Human Flesh" by Josepha Gutelius

Josepha Gutelius

The Committee Room is pleased to offer "On a Foggy Night in Paris, A Bullet Shot Randomly into the Air is Bound to Be Intercepted by Human Flesh" by Josepha Gutelius as TCR Story of the Month for July.

"On a Foggy Night in Paris, a Bullet Shot Randomly into the Air is Bound to Be Intercepted by Human Flesh," a witty and carefully observed tale of a young American bureaucrat in the beautiful but impenetrable City of Light, was published in Northwind (Spring 2013).

Josepha Gutelius writes plays, short stories, and poetry. Her story “Penny” was chosen for the anthology Best New Writing 2013. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an Eric Hoffer Award finalist.

TCR Interviews: Noreen Tomassi, Executive Director of The Center for Fiction (New York City)

The Center for Fiction
(photo from Janet Reid, Literary Agent blog)

The Committee Room takes a look at The Center for Fiction, the only organization in the United States dedicated to the art of fiction.

Located in midtown Manhattan, the Center for Fiction, which opened in 2005, offers a wide variety of resources including workshops, author readings, and reading groups. It also rents desk space to writers in need of a quiet place to get their work done, runs a fiction focused bookstore on its ground floor, publishes a literary magazine, The Literarian, and even offers something called "bibliotherapy" a service where readers are provided with a carefully selected, individually tailored list of fictional works to help see them though life's problems.  

"The Center is clearly growing, cultivating an audience for its varied and various programs and, in my view, is indeed succeeding in creating a nexus where writers and readers can share their passion for literature," wrote H.J. Schreiber in Nybeat -- Culture on a Shoestring.

Great Writers and Their Illnesses: "Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough" by John J. Ross, M.D.

The Committee Room gives an appreciative nod to modern medicine after reading Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough: The Medical Lives of Famous Writers by John J. Ross, M.D. Starting with Shakespeare and ending with George Orwell, Ross looks at the ailments that plagued some of the leading lights of English literature.

Tuberculosis, cancer, heart disease, blindness or near blindness, ulcerated skin, crippling arthritis, and deep depression are just a few of the afflictions suffered by this selection of great writers. In many cases the medical treatments they underwent were as dangerous as the diseases themselves. It's a wonder how these people got anything done at all, let alone produced enduring works of literature.