M. Allen Cunningham

Short works, interviews, podcasting, correspondence, blogging, etc. ​

short fiction publications

• "The Sky at Her Back" : an aural edition of the story, produced and featured by Petrichor Audio Magazine, summer 2018.
• Excerpt from Lost Son, German translation : Blätter der Rilke-Gesellschaft (Journal of the International Rilke Society), September 2018
• "The Sky at Her Back" : Catamaran, issue 10, summer 2015. Watch a video of Cunningham reading this story live at the Why There Are Words reading series.
• "The Silent Generations" : Catamaran Literary Reader, issue 4, October 2013
• "Interview with a Recluse" : Pear Noir!, Issue 9, Winter '13​
• "Date of Disappearance" :  Verb Audioquarterly, Vol.2 Issue2 ; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “Twelve Monthly Devotions” : The Kenyon Review, Summer '06 ; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “The Best Man” : Glimmer Train, November '05; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “Windmills” : Night Train, Fall '05; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “We Are Not Civilians Here” : Inkwell, Issue No. 17, Spring '05; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “The Next Cove” : Redivider 2:1, December '04; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “Crustacean” : Epoch 53:1, summer '04; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “The Names of Places” : Faultline Vol. 13, spring '04
• “The Man in the Blue Coat: A Chamber Picture in Six Acts” :  Anemone Sidecar Chapter 2, Snow Monkey (e-book), spring '04 ; Read a sample and buy it HERE.
• “The Giant's Face” : Boulevard, spring '04; (also HERE).
• “Pieta” : Redivider 1:1, spring '04; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.
• “Things We Can't Untie” : Inkpot, No. 3, spring '04 
• “Inscription” : Absinthe Literary Review, summer '03
• “Furniture Music” : Potpourri, fall '02 > Honorable Mention in Hermann M. Swafford Fiction Award
• “Highway” : short story, Wind Magazine, fall '02 > Pushcart Prize nominee
• “Gentle Knives” : Alaska Quarterly Review, fall '02 > Pushcart Prize nominee; also found in Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories.

 nonfiction publications

• Interview with Sarah McGrath, Editor-in-Chief of Riverhead Books : Poets & Writers, forthcoming, November/December 2020
• Interview with Ben George, Senior Editor at Little, Brown : Poets & Writers, September/October 2019
• "Variations on the Finding" : Portland Review "Unchartable" Anthology, (forthcoming April 2019)
• "Rilke & Me: From Prague to Muzot," pictures from my travels and research for LOST SON, my novel about Rilke that was published 10 years ago this spring : Medium, June 2017
• "Always, John" (In Memoriam, John Berger 1926-2017) : Propeller Quarterly, January 2017
• "Thoreau Was Actually Funny As Hell" : Lit Hub, November 2016 (the full introduction to Funny-Ass Thoreau; this essay is included in the official Thoreau Bibliography of the Thoreau Society)
• "Variations on a Beginning" : The Timberline Review No.3, Summer/Fall 2016
• "Dreamers & Demagogues: Letter from Vienna" : May 2016
• "A Publisher's Journey" : Propeller Quarterly, April 2016
• "Ghost Coda: A Rilke Pilgrimage, or: On Being Glad No One Knows You" : Tin House (The Open Bar blog), Nov 2014
• "Rethinking Restriction: Creative Limitation as a Positive Force" : Poets & Writers, Jan/Feb 2014; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "Outsideness, or: My Phone Says 'Searching...' " : Tin House (The Open Bar blog), Sept 2013
• "Learned Behaviors: Notes on Narrative and Belonging" : Fiction Writers Review, July 2013; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "An Anecdotal Glossary of Spectacle" : Oregon Humanities Magazine Spring 2013
• "Our Man in the Stacks" : Dispatch #1 (of 3) as self-appointed Writer-in-Residence at Portland's Central Library: The Oregonian, week of Oct. 1, 2012 ; Dispatch #2 - Our Man in the Stacks: The Oregonian, week of Oct. 8, 2012 ; Dispatch #3 - Our Man in the Stacks: The Oregonian, week of Oct. 15, 2012
• "There's a Crowd on My Desk" : Fiction Writers Review, August 2012; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "The Renaissance Machine" : The Oregonian, Sunday July 1, 2012
• "In the Absence of Yes" : Poets & Writers, Nov/Dec 2011; also found in Cunningham's The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "On Paul Zweig's Departures" : Tin House, "The Ecstatic" issue, Fall 2011; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "Permit No Farewell to the Age of the Bookstore!" : The Oregonian, Sunday March 13, 2011
• "From E-mails to Henry David Thoreau's Literary Agent" : The Oregonian, Sunday Dec 19, 2010; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "The Artist As Worker" : Oregon Humanities Magazine, Fall 2010; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "25 Ways E-Readers Can't Beat the Old-Fashioned Book" : The Oregonian, Sunday, Sept 19, 2010
• “The Darkness & the Light: the Art of Reading Cormac McCarthy” : Poets & Writers, Sept/Oct '07 > Read a sample and buy it HERE.
• “The Pursuit of Happiness” : Portland Monthly, November '07
• “The Caretaker's Gleanings” : Pilgrimage, November '04 

  published reviews

• The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes : American Book Review, spring 2018
• Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins : The Oregonian, November '15
• How to be both by Ali Smith : The Oregonian, February '15
• Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips : The Oregonian, October '13
• This Is Running for Your Life by Michelle Orange : The Oregonian, February '13
• Parsifal by Jim Krusoe : The Oregonian, August '12
• Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch : The Oregonian, April '12
• Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman : The Oregonian, April '11
• Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx : The Oregonian, January '11
• A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton : The Oregonian, November '10
• Anxious Pleasures by Lance Olsen : Willamette Week, July '07 
• Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje : Willamette Week, June '07

  correspondence

• Open Letter to the New York Times Book Review, re. Brian Doyle's alleged "abuse of the dictionary," April 2017
• Letter to the New York Times Book Review, re. delusional discussions of money & fiction (published Sun. May 3, 2009)
• From a Letter to a Fellow Writer Who "Hit It Big" and Got Worried About Authenticity; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook.

  spoken (selected lectures, panels, conferences, podcasts)

• Lecture on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway for Creative Writers : Portland State University, winter 2020
• "Thoreau's Leaves: the Thoreau Podcast" : an ongoing atmospheric audio immersion in Henry David Thoreau's 2-million-word journal (producer & host)
• "In the Atelier" : weekly podcast about creativity, literature, and film (producer & host)
• "Character, Plot, Time" : Guest Lecture, 6th Annual Catamaran Writing Conference, Pebble Beach CA, August 2019 
• "Six Ways to Think About Character" : Guest Lecture, Portland State University Write to Publish Conference, April 2018
• "Writing Beyond Genre" : Lecture, Pan-European MFA Program, fall 2017
• "Guests & Passengers: Depictions of Time in Literature" : Lecture,  Pan-European MFA Program, Barcelona International House, July 2017
• ​Publishing Panel with Jack Shoemaker (Counterpoint Press); Syed Haider (Chicago Quarterly Review); Catherine Segurson (Catamaran Literary Reader); Heather Lazare (editorial & publishing consultant); Michael Larsen (Larsen & Pomoda Literary Agency); Thomas Christensen (author, River of Ink) : Catamaran Writing Conference, Pebble Beach CA, August 2015.
• "The Flickering Page" : Lecture, Oregon State University, summer 2015
• "The Flickering Page" : Lecture, Benton County Historical Society (OR) & Corvallis Public Library (OR), spring 2014
• "From Print to Pixels: the Act of Reading in the Digital Age" : a presentation & seminar given in more than 25 communities throughout Oregon as part of the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project, 2012-2015. Cunningham's work with the Conversation Project inspired and informed his book The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times.
• "Paths to Publishing" : a workshop, Portland OR, November 2014
• "Outsideness, or: My Phone Says 'Searching...' " : Remarks on the Landscape of Oregon and the greater West, delivered at The Oregon Legacy Author Series, January 2013​​
• "How Reading Can Keep Us Safe" : Remarks for Banned Books Week, delivered at the ACLU Uncensored Celebration, Portland OR - 2009; also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook. 
• "Mythologizing the Local: Mythological Motifs in Contemporary Literature" : Lecture, California State University East Bay, summer 2005   

  blogged 
            At Tin House:

•  The Art of the Sentence (Jude the Obscure) : What matters is the heart-stopping effect that Thomas Hardy so beautifully—and, to our eyes, riskily—achieves.

            At Soul Shelter:

•  "Why It's Desirable to Be Eccentric":  "Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of." (Also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook.) 
• "John Ruskin on Soulful Imperfection" : “You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.”

            At Dispatches from M. Allen  Cunningham:

• "26 Books I Kept Close While Writing My New Novel Perpetua's Kin"
• "Unconventional & Essential: David Thomson's Television: A Biography" : Thomson’s tome is a remarkably free-spirited (and freewheeling) series of reflective essays.
• "Ali Smith & the Art of Novelizing Now" : To read Smith is to read a reader as much as a writer.
• "Reading Trilling" : Trilling embodies a total faith in literature, a faith that looks more and more passé. 
• "Totality of Vision: John Williams' Stoner"  : Williams’ narrative voice never deigns to be wiser than the narrative moment itself. 
• "Notes on Art and Politics" : The arts speak of who we are, and who we are is how we govern. 
• "Dear Famous Writers School ..." : You offered a new brand of clergy ordained by sales figures. (Also found inThe Honorable Obscurity Handbook.) 
• "In Defense of Reliant Novels, or: Questioning Some Dubious Estimations About Historical Fiction" : A billion radii can be drawn to these everlasting centers of human thought, event, and persona. (Also found in The Honorable Obscurity Handbook.)
• "Rainer Maria Rilke: Myths, Masks, & the Literature of a Life" : We cannot separate the man from his image. Rilke consciously managed to make himself into art.

  interviewed

• M. Allen Cunningham interviewed for Propeller Quarterly about Partisans: A Lost Work by Geoffrey Peerson Leed.
• M. Allen Cunningham interviewed for Late Night Library by LNL executive director Paul Martone. Topics included: idiosyncratic works of quiet merit and their integral place in literary culture, the honor of the writer’s obscurity, and pushing back against notional realities, particularly false cultural perceptions of what constitutes success. Listen to the conversation HERE.
• An interview with M. Allen Cunningham about his novel Lost Son and his approach to biographical fiction is featured in Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists, edited by Michael Lackey, released February 2014 by Bloomsbury. Have a look at the interview HERE.
• Author Victoria Patterson's interview with M. Allen Cunningham at Three Guys One Book
• M. Allen Cunningham interviewed at length by Kay Callison about his novel Lost Son, Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salome, Clara Westhoff, Paula Becker, Auguste Rodin (2007)
• The New Pages interview with M. Allen Cunningham (2005)
• M. Allen Cunningham interviewed on KPFA Radio, Berkeley, July 4th 2005

  considered

• Cunningham's Lost Son receives in-depth consideration in Artistic Individuality: A Study of Selected 20th Century Artist Novels by Živilė Gimbutas (2013). The other novels considered in the study are Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, John Updike's Seek My Face, and Virgina Woolf's To the Lighthouse.