Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) 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 Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University.

Early life and education

Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in La Cañada Flintridge, 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 1988, Cunningham received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and in 1993 a Guggenheim 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.

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. 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. 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. The miniseries premiered on June 7, 2019.

Personal life

Although Cunningham is gay, and married to psychoanalyst Ken Corbett, he dislikes being referred to as a gay writer, according to a PlanetOut article. 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." Cunningham lives in Brooklyn, New York and works in Manhattan.

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. He won the Premio Gregor von Rezzori for Day in 2024.