Michael Cunningham (1952 – )

Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Pasadena, California. He studied English literature at Stanford University where he earned his B.A. Later at the University of Iowa he received a Michener Fellowship and was awarded an M.F.A. While studying at Iowa, he had short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly and the Paris Review.

His short story White Angel was included in the 1989 Best American Short Stories.


In 1993 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1998 a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1995 he was awarded the Whiting Writers Award. Cunningham teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and at Brooklyn College.

For The Hours, Cunningham was awarded the:

* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
* PEN/Faulkner Award
* Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Book Award

all in 1999. The book also inspired a 2002 film of the same name.