Vinson Cunningham

New York

GREAT EXPECTATIONS, my debut novel, out from @hogarthbooks on March 12th, 2024. pre-order below. staff writer and theatre critic, @newyorker.

Articles

Peace Out, Knicks

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

Farewell to the 2024-2025 Knicks. I’m quite sure that I’ve never rooted so desperately, with such an uneasy blend of pleasure and pain, delight and despair, for such a confusing team. I could never figure out how to think about them—or, in fact, whether I even liked them—even as they zigged and zagged through a playoff run for the ages, which ended on Saturday night, with a pitiful 125–108 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game Six of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference Finals.
Rashid Johnson’s Own “Poem for Deep Thinkers”

4 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

It’s an epic display of small ideas. But what gives the exhibition its coherence is Johnson’s consistent—if tonally varied—engagement with literature. “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” is named after a piece by the poet, playwright, and jazz critic Amiri Baraka, who is a kind of guiding spirit for the show.
What It’s Like to Root for the Knicks

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

I’m not always so good at taking notes on basketball games that I plan to write about, especially if my haunted team, the New York Knicks, is among the contestants. It feels like bad luck. But on Wednesday night, feeling fine, watching the fourth quarter of a game we seemed destined to win, I typed this jubilant nonsentence into a sparsely occupied Google Doc:If you’re reading this, you already know.
The Most Important Job at the Met Gala

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

Leather, feathers, and capes—oh, my! The glamour of the Met Gala promenade honoring Black dandyism. And, then, Ian Frazier takes a deep dive into the hazardous lives of New York City pigeons. Plus:• Elon Musk’s supercomputer is polluting Memphis• A boxing match in Times Square• What we can learn from broken thingsVinson CunninghamCunningham is a critic for the magazine, and was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
Why I Can’t Quit the New York Post

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

Worse, I’m not sure I want to. If I’m away and something big happens, I usually ask a friend if he can stop by a newsstand so I don’t miss the hard copy of a good front-page headline. If I’m somewhere with a critical mass of vacationing New Yorkers, I set out on foot, knowing there’s likely a Post nearby. In August, 2022, just after the F.B.I. raid at Mar-a-Lago, in search of allegedly mishandled classified documents, I rushed into a liquor store on Martha’s Vineyard and scored a copy.
Francis, the TV Pope, Takes His Final Journey

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

Shortly after Pope Francis died, on Monday, the Vatican released a brief document he had authored in 2022, outlining his last testament: how and where he should be buried, how the proceedings should be handled. The Pope, famous—perhaps foremost—for his insistence on simplicity and aversion to clerical glitz, wanted to be buried not at the Vatican but at the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, where before and after each of his international trips he went to pray.
Mister Lonely, the New TV Hero

Mar 17, 2025 | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

In the very first shot of the pilot episode of “Paradise”—a recent dystopian political thriller from Hulu—a man played by Sterling K. Brown lies alone, unrestfully, in bed. His eyes are bolted open. A watercolor wash of blue light floods his face. He blinks a bit and looks around the room, then caresses the unused pillow next to his own.
Mister Lonely, the New TV Hero

Mar 17, 2025 | flipboard.com | Vinson Cunningham

1 day agoOne Word of Truth Shall Outweigh the Whole WorldThe Russian author’s Nobel Prize lecture contains an urgent message for contemporary audiences. In October 1970, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” In his Nobel Prize …NowWho is Juliana Pasquarosa?
Great Expectations: a national US Bestseller

Mar 1, 2025 | uk.bookshop.org | Promoting Books |Vinson Cunningham

'A phenomenal, transfixing work; Cunningham is a singular, dazzling writer' Bryan Washington'A coming-of-age novel of the richest, most expansive kind, it's a rare debut, one that feels both intimate and revelatory' Megan AbbottA historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man's life in the highly anticipated debut novel from one of The New Yorker's rising stars.
Tom Brady, Armchair Quarterback

Jan 25, 2025 | newyorker.com | Vinson Cunningham

A few months ago, when Tom Brady was beginning his career as an N.F.L. commentator for Fox Sports, a commercial aired. It begins with Brady, his face all angles, sitting at a desk in a nondescript room, looking at videos on two big monitors in front of him, laptops to his right and left, and a big TV affixed to a wall. Why he needs so much stimulation all at once isn’t totally clear, but it’s got something to do with extreme efficiency.