Michael Cunningham

Last updated
Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham JB by David Shankbone.jpg
Born (1952-11-06) November 6, 1952 (age 71)
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation
Education Stanford University (BA)
University of Iowa (MFA)
Notable work The Hours
Notable awards Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
PEN/Faulkner Award
Signature
MCunninghamSign.JPG

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]

Contents

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 Michael Cunningham 3 by David Shankbone.jpg
Cunningham reading at a W. H. Auden tribute in New York, 2007

Novels

Short stories

Collections:

Uncollected short stories:

Non-fiction

Screenplays

Contributor

Adaptations

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. [19]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Fiction</span> American award for distinguished novels

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Eugenides</span> American novelist and short story writer (born 1960)

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American author. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of the 1999 film of the same name, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armistead Maupin</span> American writer

Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer notable for Tales of the City, a series of novels set in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ford</span> American author

Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.

<i>Tales of the City</i> Series of novels written by Armistead Maupin

Tales of the City is a series of ten novels written by American author Armistead Maupin from 1978 to 2024, depicting the life of a group of friends in San Francisco, many of whom are LGBT. The stories from Tales were originally serialized prior to their novelization, with the first four titles appearing as regular installments in the San Francisco Chronicle, while the fifth appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. The remaining titles were never serialized, but were instead originally written as novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Stone (novelist)</span> American writer

Robert Anthony Stone was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denis Johnson</span> American novelist and poet (1949–2017)

Denis Hale Johnson was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, Jesus' Son (1992). His most successful novel, Tree of Smoke (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Altogether, Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His final work, a book of short stories titled The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, was published posthumously in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Haslett</span> American writer and journalist (born 1970)

Adam Haslett is an American fiction writer and journalist. His debut short story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, and his second novel, Imagine Me Gone, were both finalists for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2017, he won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Richard Bausch is an American novelist and short story writer, and Professor in the Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has published thirteen novels, nine short story collections, and one volume of poetry and prose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard McCann</span> American writer and academic (1949–2021)

Richard John McCann was an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.

<i>Tales of the City</i> (1993 miniseries) Television miniseries directed by Alastair Reid

Tales of the City is a 1993 television miniseries based on the first of the Tales of the City series of novels by Armistead Maupin.

<i>Michael Tolliver Lives</i> A novel

Michael Tolliver Lives (2007) is the seventh book in the Tales of the City series by San Francisco novelist Armistead Maupin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiyun Li</span> Chinese writer and professor

Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Johnson (writer)</span> American novelist and short story writer (born 1967)

Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing.

Salvatore Scibona is an American novelist. He has won awards for both his novels and short stories, and was selected in 2010 as one of The New Yorker's "20 under 40" Fiction Writers to Watch. His work has been published in ten languages. In 2021 he was awarded the $200,000 Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award from the American Academy of Arts and Letter for his novel The Volunteer. In its citation the Academy wrote, "Salvatore Scibona’s work is grand, tragic, epic. His novel The Volunteer, about war, masculinity, abandonment, and grimly executed grace, is an intricate masterpiece of plot, scene, and troubled character. In language both meticulous and extravagant, Scibona brings to the American novel a mythic fury, a fresh greatness."

Robert S. Jones was an American novelist and editor. He was born in Santa Monica, California.

Timothy James Beck is the collective pseudonym of four 21st-century American novelists — Timothy Forry, Timothy J. Lambert, Jim Carter, and Becky Cochrane — whose collaborative fiction focuses primarily on homosexuals, drag queens, other sexual minorities, and their families and friends. Beck's work is mostly set in Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitchell S. Jackson</span> American writer

Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.

<i>Tales of the City</i> (2019 miniseries) American LGBT drama television miniseries

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is an American drama television miniseries that premiered June 7, 2019, on Netflix, based on the Tales of the City novels by Armistead Maupin. Laura Linney, Paul Gross, Olympia Dukakis, and Barbara Garrick reprise their roles from previous television adaptations of Maupin's books: the original Tales of the City in 1993, and the sequels More Tales of the City (1998) and Further Tales of the City (2001). The series was Dukakis's final television role before her death.

Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-American writer. His 2017 novel In the Distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received a Whiting Award. For his second novel Trust, he was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

References

  1. "Meet the Writers: Michael Cunningham". barnesandnoble.com. Barnes & Noble. c. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-04-08. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
  2. "The Hours, by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  3. "Past Award Winners & Finalists | The PEN/Faulkner Foundation". www.penfaulkner.org. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  4. "Michael Cunningham | English". english.yale.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  5. "Michael Cunningham". SBA The Steven Barclay Agency. Archived from the original on 2023-06-26. Retrieved 2023-10-03.
  6. Felicelli, Anita (September 13, 2022). "The Moment: Introducing the Special Guest in Conversation with Julie Otsuka". Alta. Archived from the original on 2022-09-13.
  7. "Literature Fellowships". www.arts.gov. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  8. "Michael Cunningham". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  9. "Michael Cunningham". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 2023-12-11.
  10. metacritic entry on "Specimen Days" [ dead link ]
  11. "For Every Atom Belonging to Me: Poet Michael Cunningham", Radio Netherlands Archives, October 7, 2006
  12. "Three-Minute Fiction: The Winner Is ..." NPR.org.
  13. Petski, Denise (April 24, 2018). "Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Revival Gets Series Order At Netflix; Ellen Page Joins Cast". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved June 12, 2019.
  14. 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.
  15. PlanetOut Entertainment Archived August 29, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  16. Moore, Chadwick (September 30, 2010). "Catching Up with Michael Cunningham". Out. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  17. Alter, Alexandra (September 13, 2023). "Michael Cunningham Couldn't Help but Write a Pandemic Novel". The New York Times. Retrieved December 11, 2023.
  18. "Charles Lane Press | Books".
  19. "Le menzogne di Cunningham e la musica di Servillo - la Repubblica.it". July 2011.