Cunningham, Michael

(US 1952– )

Brought up in California and living in New York, Cunningham is among the most highly regarded American gay novelists of his generation. Begin with A Home at the End of the World (1990), centring on a household of a woman and two men, one of whom is gay. Together they care for the baby that is born, and for the dying AIDS victim who moves in with them. AIDS is confronted again in The Hours (1999; Pulitzer Prize), the story of a writer who is sustained through his worsening condition by his relationship with a lesbian friend. The book's structure is modelled on that of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925). Flesh and Blood (1995) presents three generations of the Greek-immigrant Stassos family, whose younger members break with tradition in opting for social and sexual alternatives.

Armistead Maupin, Alan Hollinghurst, Adam Mars-Jones  DH