Michael Cunningham

For other people named Michael Cunningham, see Michael Cunningham (disambiguation).

Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952)^[1] is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction^[2] and the PEN/Faulkner Award^[3] in 1999. Cunningham is Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University.^[4]

Michael Cunningham
Born	(1952-11-06) November 6, 1952 (age 72) Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Author screenwriter senior lecturer in creative writing at Yale University
Education	Stanford University (BA) University of Iowa (MFA)
Notable work	The Hours
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction PEN/Faulkner Award
Signature

Early life and education

Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in La Cañada Flintridge, California.^[5][6] He studied English literature at Stanford University, where he earned his degree. Later, at the University of Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. While studying at Iowa, he had short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly and The Paris Review. His short story "White Angel" was later used as a chapter in his novel A Home at the End of the World. It was included in "The Best American Short Stories, 1989", published by Houghton Mifflin.

In 1988, Cunningham received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship^[7] and in 1993 a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[8] In 1995 he was awarded a Whiting Award.^[9] Cunningham has taught at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and in the creative writing M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College.

Career

The Hours established Cunningham as a major force in the American writing sphere, and his 2010 novel, By Nightfall, was also well received by U.S. critics.^[10] Cunningham edited a book of poetry and prose by Walt Whitman,^[11] Laws for Creations, and co-wrote, with Susan Minot, a screenplay adapted from Minot's novel Evening. He was a producer for the 2007 film Evening, starring Glenn Close, Toni Collette, and Meryl Streep.

In November 2010, Cunningham judged one of NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contests.^[12]

In April 2018, it was announced that Cunningham would serve as consulting producer for a revival of the Tales of the City miniseries, which is based on Armistead Maupin's book series of the same name.^[13] The miniseries premiered on June 7, 2019.

Personal life

Although Cunningham is gay, and married to psychoanalyst Ken Corbett,^[14] he dislikes being referred to as a gay writer, according to a PlanetOut article.^[15] While he often writes about gay people, he does not "want the gay aspects of [his] books to be perceived as their single, primary characteristic."^[16] Cunningham lives in Brooklyn, New York and works in Manhattan.^[17]

Bibliography

Cunningham reading at a W. H. Auden tribute in New York, 2007

Novels

• Golden States (1984)
• A Home at the End of the World (1990)
• Flesh and Blood (1995)
• The Hours (1998)
• Specimen Days (2005)
• By Nightfall (2010)
• The Snow Queen (2014)
• Day (2023)

Short stories

Collections:

• A Wild Swan and Other Tales (2015), Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 978-0374290252, collection of 11 short stories:

  "Dis. Enchant.", "A Wild Swan", "Crazy Old Lady", "Jacked", "Poisoned", "A Monkey's Paw", "Little Man", "Steadfast; Tin", "Beasts", "Her Hair", "Ever/After"

Uncollected short stories:

• "White Angel" (1989), later used as a chapter in novel A Home at the End of the World
• "Mister Brother" (1999)
• "The Destruction Artist" (2007), collected in A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer (2007), edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle
• "A Wild Swan" (2010), collected in anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010), edited by Kate Bernheimer and Carmen Giménez Smith

Non-fiction

• "The Slap of Love". Open City. 6. 1996., article
• Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown (2002), travels
• Company (2008), an essay on the influence of Virginia Woolf on Cunningham's writing
• About Time: Fashion and Duration (2020), with Andrew Bolton, couture

Screenplays

• A Home at the End of the World (2004)
• Evening (2007)

Contributor

• Drawn by the Sea (2000) (exhibition catalogue text; 110 signed copies)
• The Voyage Out (2001), by Virginia Woolf (Modern Library Classics edition) (Introduction)
• I Am Not This Body: The Pinhole Photographs of Barbara Ess (2001) (Text)
• Washington Square (2004), by Henry James (Signet Classics edition) (Afterword)
• Death in Venice (2004), by Thomas Mann (new translation by Michael Henry Heim) (Introduction)
• Laws for Creations (2006), poems by Walt Whitman (Editor and introduction)
• Fall River Boys (2012), photo book by Richard Renaldi, introductory essay^[18]

Adaptations

• The Hours (2002), film directed by Stephen Daldry, based on novel The Hours
• The Hours (2022), opera with music by Kevin Puts and libretto by Greg Pierce, based on the novel and the film
• A Home at the End of the World (2004), film directed by Michael Mayer, based on novel A Home at the End of the World
• The Destruction Artist (2012), short film directed by Michael Sharpe, based on short story "The Destruction Artist"
• The Hours: A Live Tribute (2016), short film directed by Tim McNeill, based on novel The Hours

Awards and achievements

• "White Angel" was included in the 1989 Best American Short Stories.
• "Mister Brother" was included in the 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories.

For The Hours, Cunningham was awarded the:

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - 1999
• PEN/Faulkner Award - 1999
• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Book Award - 1999

In 1995, Cunningham received the a Whiting Award.

In 2011, Cunningham won the Fernanda Pivano Award for American Literature in Italy.^[19] He won the Premio Gregor von Rezzori for Day in 2024.^[20]

See also

• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT people from New York City