USA Projects

M. Allen Cunningham's debut novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow, set in nineteenth-century Northern California, was a #1 Book Sense Pick and a finalist 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 second novel, concerns the life and work of Rainer Maria Rilke, and was named a Top Ten Book of 2007 by The Oregonian.

Cunningham's latest novel, recently completed, is a historical mystery, love story, and generational saga, exploring life-changing events in one American family across five generations, from the Civil War to the final days of World War II. An excerpt, entitled "Paper Shadows," was awarded Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Family Matters story competition.

The recipient fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, Literary Arts, and Yaddo, Cunningham is the author of numerous short stories which 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," and he was recently cited in the Dzanc Books list of 20 Writers to Watch. Cunningham lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is at work on Date of Disappearance, a short story assortment to be published as an illustrated limited edition, thanks to funds raised on USA Projects.