Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham

Cunningham in New York City, 2007
Born (1952-11-06) November 6, 1952
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Occupation author, screenwriter
Notable work The Hours
Notable awards Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
PEN/Faulkner Award
Signature
Website
www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com

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 and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is a senior lecturer of creative writing at Yale University.

Early life and education

Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Pasadena, California. 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 1993, Cunningham received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1988 a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1995 he was awarded a Whiting Award. Cunningham has taught at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and in the creative writing M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College. He is a senior lecturer of creative writing at Yale University.

Career

The Hours established Cunningham as a major force in American writing, and his 2010 novel, By Nightfall, was also well received by American critics.[2] Cunningham edited a book of poetry and prose by Walt Whitman, 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.[3]

Personal life

Although Cunningham is gay and was in a long-term domestic partnership with psychoanalyst Ken Corbett,[4] he dislikes being referred to as a gay writer, according to a PlanetOut article.[5] 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."[6]

Bibliography

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

Novels

Short story collections

Nonfiction

Screenplays

Contributor

Stories and articles

Awards and achievements

For The Hours, Cunningham was awarded the:

In 1995, Cunningham received the a Whiting Award.

In 2011 Cunningham won The Fernanda Pivano Award for American Literature in Italy.[7]

References

  1. ↑ "Meet the Writers: Michael Cunningham". barnesandnoble.com. Barnes & Noble. c. 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
  2. ↑ metacritic entry on "Specimen Days"
  3. ↑ NPR Three Minute Fiction
  4. ↑ Leland, John (October 24, 2002). "At Home With: Michael Cunningham; This Is the House The Book Bought". The New York Times. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  5. ↑ PlanetOut Entertainment Archived August 29, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ Moore, Chadwick (September 30, 2010). "Catching Up with Michael Cunningham". Out. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  7. ↑ http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2011/07/01/le-menzogne-di-cunningham-la-musica-di.html
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