Michael Cunningham

PEN/Faulkner | PULITZER Prize

Works By Cunningham

Washington, D.C. Author Michael Cunningham’s work, The Hours | Hardcover | Paperback | Audio Cassette | Audio CD | e-book Microsoft has been selected by judges Sue Miller, Joanna Scott, and Lawrence Thornton (PEN/Hemingway winner) as the winner of the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The announcement of the nineteenth annual national literary award was made today by the directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Robert Stone, Chairman.

The PEN/Faulkner Award is the largest annual juried prize for fiction in the United States. The winner of the award receives $15,000 and each of the four nominees receives $5,000.

The judges considered over 270 novels and short story collections published in the U.S. during the 1998 calendar year from 93 publishing houses, including small and academic presses. Mr. Cunningham and the four nominees will be honored at a ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Saturday, May 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $75. The public may call 202.544.7077 to purchase tickets.

Michael Cunningham’s third novel, The Hours | Hardcover | Paperback | Audio Cassette | Audio CD | e-book Microsoft, draws on the life and work of Virginia Woolf and intertwines it into the lives of two contemporary women. Identifying with Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway , Cunningham’s characters Clarissa Vaughan and Laura Brown struggle individually to cope with their own conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.

In The New York Times Michael Woods calls the award-winning work, "a delicate, triumphant glance, an acknowledgment of Woolf that takes her into Cunningham's own territory" Jameson Courier of The Washington Post writes "Cunningham has deftly created something original, a trio of richly interwoven tales that alternate with one another chapter by chapter, each of them entering the thoughts of a character as she moves through the small details of a day . . . Cunningham’s emulation of such a revered writer as Woolf is courageous, and this is his most mature and masterful work."

The four other nominated writers are Russell Banks for Cloudsplitter* ; Barbara Kingsolver for The Poisonwood Bible* ; Brian Morton for Starting Out in the Evening* ; and Richard Selzer for The Doctor Stories*

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, founded in 1980, and first given in 1981, is supported by grants, contributions, special events and benefit readings, and is located at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The Foundation also sponsors an annual reading series and the Writers in Schools program, in which authors participating in the PEN/Faulkner reading series teach classes in Washington, D.C. public high schools.

Home at the End of the World* by Michael Cunningham

Flesh and Blood* by Michael Cunningham