News and Upcoming Events

Steinbeck Spring Reading 2025

Tuesday, May 13: 7PM PST (MLK 590, Steinbeck Center)

The Steinbeck Fellows Program will hold its spring semester reading on May 13 at 7PM in the Steinbeck Center (MLK 590). The reading will feature 2024-2025 Fellows Thea Chacamatty, Joe Dornich and Chino Lee Chung.

This is a hybrid event. If you are planning on joining us via Zoom, then registration is required.

Thea Chacamaty earned her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was also a 2019-2020 Postgraduate Zell Fellow. She has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo and In Cahoots, as well as the Henfield Prize, a Hopwood Award, the Kasdan Scholarship, and Michigan Quarterly Review's 2024 Lawrence Foundation Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Missouri Review, and others. She lives in the Bay Area with her family, where she is at work on a short story collection and a novel.

Chino Lee Chung is a queer Chinese Mexican personal essay writer, grassroots activist, and is currently working on a collection of essays that integrate his social activism with his intersectional identities. He holds an MFA from the California College of Arts and will graduate with another MFA degree from San Francisco State University next semester. His work appears in Gender Queer: voices from beyond the sexual binary, Our Family Coalition Newsletter, and is an Assistant Fiction Editor at 14 Hills Literary Magazine.

Joe Dornich is the author of the short story collection, The Ways We Get By. His stories have won contests and fellowships from The Master’s Review, Carve Magazine, South Central MLA, Key West Literary Seminars, and The South Carolina Academy of Authors, among others. Joe lives in California and teaches at Cal State University San Bernardino.

The Steinbeck Fellows Program has helped to forward the careers of many remarkable writers working today, including best-selling novelists R.O. Kwon, Vanessa Hua and Gabriela Garcia, California Book Award winner Shruti Swamy, AKO Caine Prize winner Meron Hadero, O. Henry Prize winner Francisco Gonzalez, and many others.

Steinbeck Center Sword Acquisition

The Steinbeck Center proudly exhibits this Sword with a declaration of Knighthood, a gift from John Steinbeck to his Sister Mary as a symbol of her courage as she fought cancer. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table opened Steinbeck's eyes to the lasting power of literature and are the foundation to his belief in Human Rights and Dignity. John and Mary read the stories and their child's play inspired Steinbeck's talent for storytelling. His love for language, the sounds and sights that words convey, all tie together with the love for his sister and the nostalgia for the world created in childhood.

To see the sword in person, please refer to our Hours page.

John Steinbeck: A Writer's Vision

A short biography of author John Steinbeck's life and career, as told through archival photos and videos. Produced by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University in October 2023.