Affiliates
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Works by
Michael Cunningham
(Writer)
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Laws for Creations (2006)
In Walt Whitman, Michael Cunningham sees a poet
whose vision of humanity is ecstatic, democratic, and sensuous. Just
over a hundred years ago, Whitman celebrated America as it survived
the Civil War, as it endured great poverty, and as it entered the
Industrial Revolution, which would make it the most powerful nation on
Earth. In Specimen Days Michael Cunningham makes Whitmans verse sing
across time, and in Laws for Creations he celebrates what Whitman
means to him, and how he appeared at the heart of his new novel. Just
as the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours drew on the life and work of
English novelist Viriginia Woolf, Specimen Days lovingly features the
work of American poet Walt Whitman. Bringing together extracts from
Whitmans prodigious writings, including Leaves of Grass and his
journal, Specimen Days, Michael Cunninghams Laws for Creations
provides an introduction to one of Americas greatest visionary poets
from one of our greatest contemporary novelists.
Specimen Days (2005)
In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his
first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a
young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a
ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial
revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the
new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early
twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller
as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs,
seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, "Like Beauty,"
evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but
overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be
contacted by the people of Earth.
Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole
is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his
future readers, "It avails not, neither time or place . . . I am with
you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting,
and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation
on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of
surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring
writers at work today.
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Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown (2002)
In this celebration of one of America’s oldest
towns (incorporated in 1720), Michael Cunningham, author of the
best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours,
brings us Provincetown, one of the most idiosyncratic and
extraordinary towns in the United States, perched on the sandy tip at
the end of Cape Cod.
Provincetown, eccentric, physically remote, and heartbreakingly
beautiful, has been amenable and intriguing to outsiders for as long
as it has existed. “It is the only small town I know of where those
who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the
prescribed bounds of home and licensed marriage, respectable job, and
biological children,” says Cunningham. “It is one of the places in the
world you can disappear into. It is the Morocco of North America, the
New Orleans of the north.”
He first came to the place more than twenty years ago, falling in love
with the haunted beauty of its seascape and the rambunctious charm of
its denizens. Although Provincetown is primarily known as a summer
mecca of stunning beaches, quirky shops, and wild nightlife, as well
as a popular destination for gay men and lesbians, it is also a place
of deep and enduring history, artistic and otherwise. Few towns have
attracted such an impressive array of artists and writers—from
Tennessee Williams to Eugene O’Neill, Mark Rothko to Robert Motherwell—who,
like Cunningham, were attracted to this finger of land because it was
. . . different, nonjudgmental, the perfect place to escape to; to be
rescued, healed, reborn, or simply to live
in peace. As we follow Cunningham on his various excursions through
Provincetown and its surrounding landscape, we are drawn into its
history, its mysteries, its peculiarities—places you won’t read about
in any conventional travel guide.
A Home at the End of the World (1990)
From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of The Hours, comes this widely praised novel of
two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of
himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after
college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a
veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love,
scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child.
Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small
house upstate to raise "their" child together and, with an odd friend,
Alice, create a new kind of family. A Home at the End of the World
masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life
today.
Flesh and Blood (1995) -- Winner 1995 Lambda Literary Award for Male Fiction
In Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham takes us
on a masterful journey through four generations of the Stassos family
as he examines the dynamics of a family struggling to "come of age" in
the 20th century.
In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant
laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl, and together
they produce three children: Susan, an ambitious beauty, Billy, a
brilliant homosexual, and Zoe, a wild child. Over the years, a web of
tangled longings, love, inadequacies and unfulfilled dreams unfolds as
Mary and Constantine's marriage fails and Susan, Billy, and Zoe leave
to make families of their own. Zoe raises a child with the help of a
transvestite, Billy makes a life with another man, and Susan raises a
son conceived in secret, each extending the meaning of family and
love. With the power of a Greek tragedy, the story builds to a
heartbreaking crescendo, allowing a glimpse into contemporary life
which will echo in one's heart for years to come.
The Hours (1998) Winner 1999 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction; Winner 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction;
Finalist for the1999 ALA GLBTF Book Award for Literature.
The Hours tells the story of three
women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she
recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa
Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in
modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown,
in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the
constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel,
these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come
together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.
Golden States (1985)
"...This spring David Stark will cross the
boundary from youth to manhood. Like Huckleberry Finn's coming of age,
David's passage captures, for one golden moment, a time (the 1980s), a
place (Southern California), and a way of seeing the world that
exemplifies America itself -- as it is now, as it is changing, and as
it will become.
Here is the story of a man whose courage, wonder, and love for his
family represent all of us at our best. Here is an American family
that -- in its vulnerability and endurance -- is all our families. And
here is a startlingly fine first novel that celebrates all that is
good and interesting about this country and its people..."
Other
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Electric Literature: #1
(2009)
Includes works by Diana Wagman, Jim Shepard, Lydia
Millet, Michael Cunningham, and
T Cooper
Electric Literature is just that, electric - five great stories that
grab you. Our Summer 2009 debut anthology features the first
published excerpt from Michael Cunningham's forthcoming novel. This
issue also features new fiction by some of America's most innovative
and important contemporary writers, including Jim Shepard, T Cooper,
Lydia Millet, and Diana Wagman. These stories are charged with wit,
incident, and emotional gravity right from the first sentence.
See also:
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A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer
(2007)
Selections from the “Until the Violence Stops” Festival
Featuring writings by Abiola Abrams,
Alice Walker , Anna Deavere Smith, Ariel Dorfman, Betty Gale Tyson,
Carol Gilligan, Carol Michèle Kaplan, Christine House, Dave Eggers,
Deena Metzger, Diana Son, Edward Albee, Edwidge Danticat, Elizabeth
Lesser, Erin Cressida Wilson, Eve Ensler, Hanan al-Shaykh, Howard Zinn,
James Lecesne, Jane Fonda, Jody
Williams, Jyllian Gunther, Kate
Clinton, Kathy Engel, Kathy Najimy, Kimberle Crenshaw, Lynn Nottage,
Marie Howe, Mark Matousek, Maya Angelou,
Michael Cunningham,
Michael Eric Dyson,
Michael Klein,
Moises Kaufman, Mollie
Doyle, Monica Szlekovics, Nicholas Kristof, Nicole Burdette, Patricia
Bosworth, Periel Aschenbrand, Robert Thurman, Robin Morgan, Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy, Sharon Olds, Slavenka Drakulic, Suheir Hammad, Susan
Miller, Susan Minot, Tariq Ali, and Winter Miller.
This groundbreaking collection, edited by author and playwright Eve
Ensler, features pieces from “Until the Violence Stops,” the
international tour that brings the issue of violence against women and
girls to the forefront of our consciousness. These diverse voices rise
up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the
insidiousness of brutality, neglect, a punch, or a put-down. Here is
Edward Albee on S&M; Maya Angelou on women’s work; Michael Cunningham on
self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese abduction; Carol
Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on
raising a son as a single mother; and Sharon Olds on a bra.
These writings are inspired, funny, angry, heartfelt, tragic, and
beautiful. But above all, together they create a true and profound
portrait of this issue’s effect on every one of us. With information on
how to organize an “Until the Violence Stops” event in your community, A
Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer is a call to the world to
demand an end to violence against women.
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Something Inside: Conversations With Gay Fiction Writers
(1980, 1999) by Philip
Gambone, Compiler and
Robert Giard,
Photographer
In the last twenty years, gay
literature has earned a place at the American and British literary
tables, spawning its own constellation of important writers and winning
a dedicated audience. No one though, until Philip Gambone, has attempted
to offer a collective portrait of our most important gay writers. This
collection of interviews attempts just that, and is notable both for the
depth of Gambone's probing conversations and for the sheer range of
important authors included. Virtually every prominent gay author writing
in English today is here, including
Alan Hollinghurst, Allen Barnett,
Andrew Holleran,
Bernard Cooper,
Brad Gooch,
Brian Keith Jackson,
Christopher Bram,
David Leavitt,
David Plante,
Dennis Cooper,
Edmund White,
Gary Glickman,
John Preston,
Joseph Hansen,
Lev Raphael,
Michael Cunningham, Michael
Lowenthal, Michael Nava,
Paul Monette,
Peter Cameron, and
Scott Heim.
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Related Topics
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relation to this page.
Michael
Cunningham Is Listed As A Favorite Of (Alphabetical Order By First Name)
Andrea Cagan
Corrina Wycoff
David Ebershoff
Ellen Hart
Frank Anthony Polito
Jennifer Fulton
Jerry L.
Wheeler
Jim Van Buskirk
Lewis DeSimone
Richard McCann
Michael's Favorite Authors/Books (Alphabetical Order By First Name) [As of x] TO BE DETERMINED |