Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is a well-known American novelist and screenwriter. He is also a respected lecturer of creative writing at Yale University. His works received great criticism since the start of his career, as "White Angel" was included in the 1989 Best American Short Stories, and "Mister Brother" was included in the 2000 O. Henry Prize Stories. However, he is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which established Cunningham as a major force in the American writing sphere. For The Hours, he was awarded The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999; The PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999; The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Book Award in 1999. And in 1995, Cunningham received the Whiting Award.

After The Hours, his 2010 novel, By Nightfall, was also well received by U.S. critics. And in 2011, Cunningham won the Fernanda Pivano Award for American Literature in Italy. Besides writing, Cunningham also succeeds as a producer. He was a producer for the 2007 film Evening, starring Glenn Close, Toni Collette, and Meryl Streep.

Cunningham lives and works in Manhattan. According to a PlanetOut article, despite being gay and having a long-term domestic partnership with psychotherapist Ken Corbett, Cunningham dislike the label "gay writer." The author does not "want the gay parts of [his] writings to be viewed as their single, dominant trait," despite the fact that he frequently writes about gay characters.