How Michael Cunningham Spent His Summer Vacation

Michael Cunningham is spending his summer in Provincetown, hard at work on his latest novel. (And yes, we're a little jealous.) EW's Shelf Life caught up with him and gleaned some details about the new book, tentatively titled Olympia, and his other projects, including the screenplay for a Dusty Springfield biopic starring Nicole Kidman.

An excerpt from the novel appears in the current digital issue of Electric Literature (along with work from Out contributor T Cooper), and "charts the relationship of two brothers growing up in 1970s suburban Milwaukee, the flamboyantly gay Matthew (he even figure skates!) and his younger brother, the presumably straight Peter." On how the story fits into the novel in progress, Cunningham explains: "Peter is the central character. He's an art dealer and he finds that he is increasingly drawn to his wife's very much younger brother, who evinces for him everything that was appealing about his wife when he first met her. He's not gay. Well, he's probably a little gay because we're all a little gay, right? But it's certainly eroticized."

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