Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theatre Vinson Cunningham has been named a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award in the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book category for his debut novel, Great Expectations (Hogarth, 2024).
Cunningham joins five other finalists for the John Leonard Prize, which recognizes outstanding first books across all genres. Winners of the eight competitive NBCC categories will be announced on March 20, 2025, at the New School in New York City.
Great Expectations follows David, a young Black man who spends eighteen months working for a presidential campaign. Throughout the story, David meets various people who raise questions about history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—themes that force him to reconsider his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
The novel, which draws from Cunningham's own experience working on Barack Obama's presidential campaign, has received widespread critical acclaim since its publication. The Washington Post called it "a coming-of-age story that captures the soul of America," while author Colum McCann described it as "brilliantly written, piercingly smart, quietly subversive."
In addition to his work as a novelist and professor, Cunningham is a staff writer and theater critic at The New Yorker. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2024 and received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2021-2022. His essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, FADER, and Vulture.
