M. Allen Cunningham’s debut novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow, set in nineteenth-century Northern California, was shortlisted for the 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year Award alongside Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. The Salt Lake Tribune named The Green Age one of six “Best Books of the West” in 2004. Lost Son, Cunningham’s latest novel, is a fantasia on the life and work of Rainer Maria Rilke, and was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2007 by The Oregonian.
Cunningham’s numerous short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Alaska Quarterly Review and other distinguished literary magazines, and have been featured in live performance by the New Short Fiction Series of Beverly Hills. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler calls Cunningham “a lushly talented young writer.” ForeWord Magazine has named him “one of America’s most promising voices.” The recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission, Cunningham lives in Portland, OR. He has recently completed a collection of short fiction, a feature screenplay adaptation of his story “The Best Man,” and is at work on his third novel.
See also: "The Trifling Trinomial: in Which the Author Discloses How Arbitrary One's Own Sobriquet Can Be." And:"Dispatch From an Upstart."