Laura Shaine Cunningham leads a diversified life as an author, playwright and journalist.

She is the author of nine published books, including the acclaimed Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in the Country; both memoirs first appeared in The New Yorker magazine and were excerpted in The New York Times and The London Times.

A Place in the Country was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsday, the Atlantic and literary quarterlies such as Ascent.

She is the winner of many awards, including four N.E.A. and NYFA Fellowships, two each in the categories of literature and theatre.

She frequently speaks on Memoir Writing, Fiction writing, Playwriting and has held workshops at Omega, Mohonk Mountain House, SUNY New Paltz, the Woodstock Writers Festival, Harvard, and N.Y.U. and will be featured at the San Miguel Writers Conference, February 2016 .

Her plays are widely produced and anthologized in the Best Plays series, the most recent being Best Plays of 2013-4 and in many editions of Vintage Random House Play collections: Plays for Actresses, Take Ten, Take Ten II, Laugh Lines, Leading Ladies, Shorter, Funnier, Faster
And Plays by Laura Shaine Cunningham (Broadway Play Publishing)

MEMOIRS

Sleeping Arrangements, the story of an orphan raised by her two bachelor uncles became a modern classic and garnered these reviews:
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird:
“A beautiful story I shall cherish for years to come…”

New York Times: “A model memoir, funny, sad, irreverent and generous.”
Michiko Kakutani

The Baltimore Sun: “Reads like a novel. You may find yourself sitting very quietly, mulling over the marvels of this truly wonderful book.” Anne Tyler.

The Wall Street Journal:
“A world simmering with sex and death and intrigue…Sharp witted and funny but never mean, she is a memorialist a bit like Truman Capote…” Julie Salamon,

The Washington Post: “An enchanting memoir…”

Sunday London Telegraph: “Laura Shaine Cunningham blends memory, fantasy and reality with a sure touch; her book is funny and resolutely unsentimental, a contribution to the literature of childhood experience as well as a tribute to her long-lost mother, to her remarkable, generous-hearted uncles and to the saving grace of family loyalty and affection.”

A Place in the Country:
“The New York Times Book Review (COVER review)
Laura Shapiro:
“Cunningham makes it delightfully clear that the horrors of the simple life, from snakes to nasty neighbors, are right up front with the bliss…she’s a sharp and witty writer. If this particular memoirist were offering up 287 pages on life in an auto parts dealership, you’d be well advised to accept…This book…reminds me most of “The Egg and I”…published in l945, remains a pleasure to read. Half a century from now, someone is sure to be saying the same thing about “A Place in the Country.”

The New York Times: Michiko Kakutani
“…as engaging as “Sleeping Arrangements”. Adept at poking fun at her and her husband’s city-slicker dreams, Ms.Cunningham also gives us some delightful portraits of …their friends and neighbors.”

The San News Jose Mercury:
Sleeping Arrangements…was so extravagantly loved by readers and reviewers that A Place in the Country” would seem destined to suffer by comparison. It doesn’t; A Place in the Country” is warm, funny, shrewd and fabulous entertaining.” What comes as a surprise (is) how much of the book spins off in astonishing directions as Cunningham’s life transforms and deepens…..”

The Chicago Tribune
“This is a wiser, deeper voice than the one heard in Sleeping Arrangements” and it is a voice well worth listening to, equally convincing for its range and hard-won clarity”… Floyd Scoot
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NOVELS

Sweet Nothings

Excerpted in the Atlantic Monthly.
Boston Globe:
“Alarmingly funny and like the best humor, all too true.”

The Kansas City Star:
“Comic Genius! Alarmingly funny and like the best humor, all too true.”

San Francisco Examiner:
“Irreverent and effervescent!”

Memphis Press-Scimitar:
“As wittily devastating as Dorothy Parker and a tighter writer than Anita Loos, Laura Cunningham makes sexual passion the funniest thing to hit the mattress.”

Houston Chronicle:
“The funniest, freest exposition of the game of sex lurking under the covers of LOVE.”
Third Parties

The New York Times: “Witty”

Beautiful Bodies

The New York Observer:
“Makes one want to shower Ms.Cunningham with kisses…Its little universe calls to mind Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.Dalloway. ..luminous and dark. Funny and sad, airy and filled with meaning.” Alexandra Jacobs

Dreams of Rescue

Publishers Weekly:
“Laura Shaine Cunningham’s best novel to date.”

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