M. Allen Cunningham

For his prose piece "Lionheart" (an excerpt from his next book), M. Allen Cunningham was named the Grand Prize Winner in the 2025 Clarissa Dalloway Prize. He receives a cash award and publication in L'Esprit Literary Review, Issue 7 (autumn 2025).

An annual award promoting innovative work that looks to the legacy of Virginia Woolf, the Clarissa Dalloway Prize seeks "risk-adept, language-driven writing crafted in a revolutionary spirit" and "welcome[s] pieces that challenge convention in form, style, and/or content, and which invite us to think differently about the world."
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AWARD CITATION by Diane Josefowicz:

“Lionheart” dazzled me from the outset for its ingenious premise, a biographical investigation of Virginia Woolf as glimpsed through the point of view of her husband, Leonard, a person nearly lost to history, overshadowed by his wife’s fame; but who was himself a towering figure, a prolific writer and indefatigable editor, who also, of course, ran Hogarth Press with Virginia. “Lionheart” offers a picture of the man and of the marriage, tenderly exploring even the places where he could not follow her. Formally the piece is a slam-dunk: the hybrid form, mingling poetry, fiction, found fragments, and essay, is a beautifully capacious container for what is, in the end, an epic love story, worthy of its brilliant principals.