Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham was born in Ohio and grew up in Southern California. He studied English at Stanford and went on to obtain an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he began to publish his first short stories. While his early works received awards and critical acclaim, particularly his novel A Home at the End of the World, Cunningham’s breakthrough novel was The Hours (1998), which won the Pulitzer Prize and brought his work to a wider audience. Cunningham also wrote the screenplay for 2002 film adaptation of The Hours, which further increased the popularity of the novel, and which led to Nicole Kidman winning a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf. Cunningham has continued to write stories, novels, screenplays, and nonfiction, with his most recent novel, Day, dealing with a family affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He currently lectures on English literature at Yale University.