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Lycoming College will welcome the award-winning author Michael Cunningham to campus for a reading of his work on Friday, April 17, at 5:30 p.m., in the Trogner Presentation Room in Krapf Gateway Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Serving as Lycoming College’s Himes/Sweeney Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing, Cunningham will also meet with creative writing and literature students at Lycoming College and will field questions about his writing.
“Michael Cunningham's visit will be cherished by all who attend his reading, but especially by students. For many of our majors, his visit will undoubtedly be a highlight in their college career,” said Sascha Feinstein, Ph.D., Robert L. & Charlene Shangraw Professor of English at Lycoming College.
A professor in the practice at Yale University, Cunningham is the author of seven novels: “A Home at the End of the World” (1990), “Flesh and Blood” (1995), “The Hours” (1998), “Specimen Days” (2005), “By Nightfall” (2010), “The Snow Queen” (2014), and “Day” (2024). A collection of short stories, “A Wild Swan and Other Tales,” was published in 2016. A work of non-fiction, “Land’s End,” appeared in 2003, and a new non-fiction book, “Unsayable,” is forthcoming in the summer of 2026. Cunningham has received grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations.
“The Hours,” which received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award, is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and all publications in his prolific body of work have received the highest critical praise.
Cunningham earned a B.A. in English literature from Stanford University in 1975. He later earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1980.
The Himes/Sweeney Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing series was endowed by Diane Sweeney ’60 and her husband John Sweeney in 2011. Named scholars visit creative writing classes at Lycoming College where students have the opportunity to meet these acclaimed authors, listen to formal presentations, and engage them in discussions about their work. More information about the creative writing and literature programs at Lycoming College is available at www.lycoming.edu/english.