Michael Cunningham is an American novelist and screenwriter, born on November 6, 1952, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in La Cañada, California. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham's other works include A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall. His non-fiction work includes Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown. His recent novel, The Snow Queen, was published in 2014, and A Wild Swan and Other Tales, a story collection illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, was released in 2015.

Cunningham received his B.A. in English Literature from Stanford University and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. His work has appeared in esteemed publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Whiting Writers' Award (1995), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1988), and a Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa (1982).

Cunningham is a Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University. An opera adaptation of The Hours debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in November 2022, and a film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry, featuring Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and Meryl Streep, was critically acclaimed, receiving nine Academy Award nominations.