The Steinbeck Fellowship Celebrates 25 Years of Literary Success

Before he became a celebrated American novelist, John Steinbeck lived in his parents' family home in Pacific Grove to focus on writing. His parents, who lived in Salinas, supported him with monthly checks as he focused on the books that would later become "The Pastures of Heaven" (1932), "The Long Valley" (1938), "Tortilla Flat" (1935), "The Dubious Battle" (1936), "Of Mice and Men" (1937) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939). Nick Taylor, professor of English and comparative literature and director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at SJSU, says that Steinbeck's family saw their ongoing support as an investment in his career to come.

"Martha Heasley Cox knew this story, and wanted to do something similar for aspiring writers," says Taylor, who also served as director of the Steinbeck Fellowship program from 2012-2021, during which he organized international conferences about the life and work of Steinbeck in 2013, 2016 and 2019. "Over the last 40 years, a lot of the apprenticeship in literature has moved from the publishing industry to the academy. For many writers, after they graduate from an MFA program, there's a gap between completing their education and becoming a published author, and I've always felt that the fellowship program goes a long way toward filling that gap."

The program exists thanks to Cox, a pioneering academic and Steinbeck scholar who joined the SJSU faculty in 1955. She founded the Steinbeck Research Center in 1973 and taught American literature, English composition, drama and film studies until she retired in 1989. In 2001, she launched the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, a unique year-long funded opportunity for writers of fiction and nonfiction, as well as a graduate student fellowship for master's students at SJSU.

When the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library was constructed in 2003, the physical center moved to the fifth floor, home to more than 40,000 items - manuscripts, original letters, inscribed first editions, secondary works, film memorabilia, films, cassettes and over 1,400 photographs related to Steinbeck's life and career.

The fellowship program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has supported 94 writers with over $1 million in funding. Award-winning writer Keenan Norris , associate professor of English and comparative literature, has served as the fellowship program coordinator since 2021.

"The fellowship offers writers $15,000, which is designed to increase the amount of time they can spend completing their novels, memoirs or research needed for their books," says Norris. "Beyond the money itself, the fellowship offers a sort of psychological encouragement. Being a writer can be tough; there can be a lot of rejection and indifference to your work. So to be selected for a competitive fellowship like this is incredibly encouraging."

Each year, six writers are selected based on the strength of their writing samples, project proposals and letters of recommendation. The Steinbeck Center hosts two readings of their work a year, once at the end of each semester, and the cohort is encouraged (but not required) to exchange work and develop a community amongst each other. For writers like The New York Times best-selling Kirstin Chen, who was a Steinbeck fellow in 2011-2012, the program created more opportunities for her with each publication.

"The Steinbeck Fellowship was one of the first significant literary awards of my career," she says. "It gave me the encouragement and time I needed to complete my first novel, 'Soy Sauce for Beginners,' which sold the summer after my fellowship year."

Since her time at San José State, Chen has published two more novels - "Bury What We Cannot Take" and "Counterfeit," the latter of which has been translated into eight languages and is being adapted for the screen by Sony Pictures. Her next novel, inspired in part by Silicon Valley, "Tech Wives," is forthcoming.

Other notable Steinbeck fellows include Yalitza Ferreras (2014-2015), one of several fellows to earn a Rona Jaffe Award, a $30,000 award for emerging women writers of exceptional promise. Fiction writer Lysley Tenorio , a 2007-2008 fellow, has gone on to receive fellowships from Stanford, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. R.O. Kwon (2014-2015) has gone on to author two national bestselling novels, "The Incendiaries" (2018) and "Exhibit" (2024).

Journalist and novelist Vanessa Hua(2013-2014) describes her fellowship experience as "invaluable," adding that "during my fellowship year, I regularly traded work with the other two fellows, Dallas Woodburn and Tommy Mouton - both talented and supportive writers. I completed a draft of my first novel, 'A River of Stars.' In the years since, I've loved coming back to read from on campus. And it's exciting to learn about the work of each new cohort."

Two of Hua's books, "Forbidden City" and "Deceit and Other Possibilities," were finalists for the Northern California Book Award. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she also received a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award , the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan literary award , and a California Arts Council Artist Fellowship. Her novel "Coyoteland " and memoir "Uprooted " are forthcoming.

The program continues to thrive thanks to Cox's philanthropy. Though she passed away in 2023, her legacy lives on in the perpetuity of the fellowship, as well as the Steinbeck Center itself, home to an incredible bibliography, the Steinbeck Center Photo Archive, the Steinbeck in the Schools program for K-12 educators, collections of Steinbeck's letters and music and more.

"Martha's focus was always on the scholarly side of Steinbeck studies, which she left money for in her will," says Taylor. "But she left the majority of the money in her estate to bolster the Steinbeck Fellowship program. A lifetime of giving to a particular cause can produce something that will persist long beyond the life of the donor, as is the case with the Steinbeck Fellowship."

Members of this year's cohort of Steinbeck fellows - Sarah Matsui, Nayereh Doosti and Kate Busatto - will be reading excerpts from their work at 7 p.m. on December 2 at the Steinbeck Center in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Bill Nguyen, Olivia Cheng and Jennie Li will share their work at a spring 2026 reading.

"This amazing program is thanks to the commitment of its founder, Martha Heasley Cox, who felt even a small amount of money would help writers finish a project," says Shannon Miller, dean of the College of Humanities and the Arts. "You can see how many people have benefited from her vision 25 years later!"

Learn more about the Dec. 2 reading at the Steinbeck Center.