Michael Cunningham

Michael Cunningham is a writer known mostly for his 1998 novel The Hours. I loved that book and it’s stayed with me over the years. I find myself thinking about it not infrequently, probably at least once every few months.

I’ve read three other books by him, two novels: Flesh and Blood and Specimen Days, as well as a wonderful little non-fiction book called A Walk in Provincetown, which I highly recommend. He also has a new book coming out in May of 2014 called The Snow Queen. What really inspires me about Michael Cunningham (as well as author Ian McEwan whom I’ve also included in my gallery) is the true beauty of his prose. There’s a sentence in The Hours that struck me as just such a perfect sentence that when I met Michael Cunningham at a book signing for Specimen Days, I also had him sign my copy of The Hours, not on the usual title page but instead on the page that contains that sentence. Prose like that is so incredibly difficult to write. Michael Cunningham inspires me to at least give it a try.