Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham is an American novelist with a critically acclaimed and award winning book that has set him up as one the great American authors of this century. He was born on November 6, 1952 in Cincinnati, Ohio. However, he grew up in Pasadena, California. He has declared that he is openly gay. Yet he does not like to be referred to as a gay writer. He is cited as saying that just because he is gay and a writer, these should not be the defining qualities of who he is.

In 1998, Cunningham wrote the novel, The Hours. This novel launched his career as a writer and instructor of writing. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, an incredible and extremely difficult award to win. This novel also went on to win the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.

Cunningham earned his bachelor’s degree in English literature from Stanford University, and then later went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts degree from the very famous and prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He has gone on to write many short stories that have been published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and the Paris Review. Since his time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he has edited several famous authors’ works, including Walt Whitman, and has adapted a novel into a screenplay.

Cunningham is currently a professor at Yale University where he is a professor of creative writing. His is in a long-term partnership with the psychoanalyst Ken Corbett. His most recent novel is, Specimen Days.