American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham was BOTD in 1952. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he studied at Stanford University and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He made waves with his 1990 debut novel A Home at the End of the World, chronicling a love triangle between a gay man, his lover and the mother of his child. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, a fictional portrayal of Virginia Woolf‘s struggle to write Mrs Dalloway, and the book’s profound impact on two of her readers at different points in time. Cresting on the feminist re-evaluation of Woolf’s work and sexuality, The Hours became an international bestseller, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was filmed successfully by Stephen Daldry in 2001, winning an Oscar for Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Woolf, and adapted into an opera in 2022 by Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce. Cunningham’s subsequent novels Specimen Days, By Nightfall, The Snow Queen and Day, while respectfully received by critics, failed to achieve the same commercial success, prompting him to quip “Some people have never forgiven me for not just writing The Hours again”. He wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film adaptation of At Home at the End of the World, and co-adapted the 2007 film Evening with poet Susan Minot, based on her novel, both of which were critical and commercial failures. He also worked as a consulting producer on the 2019 TV reboot of Armistead Maupin‘s Tales of the City novel series. Cunningham lives in New York City with his husband Ken Corbett.