John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son of John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father served as County Treasurer, while his mother was a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended Stanford University, though he left in 1925 without earning a degree. He held various jobs, including sales clerk, farm laborer, ranch hand, and factory worker. In 1925, he traveled by freight train from Los Angeles to New York, where he worked as a construction laborer. From 1926 to 1928, he served as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe, California. His first novel, *Cup of Gold*, was published in 1929. During the 1930s, he wrote most of his well-known novels, including *To a God Unknown*, *Tortilla Flat*, *In Dubious Battle*, *Of Mice and Men*, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning *The Grapes of Wrath*. In 1941, he moved to New York City with the singer who would become his second wife. The couple had two sons, Thom (born 1944) and John IV (born 1946). In 1948, Steinbeck experienced the death of his close friend Ed Ricketts, went through a divorce, toured Russia, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote the screenplay for *Viva Zapata!* (1952), and 17 of his works have been adapted into films. He received three Academy Award nominations. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson presented him with the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964, and he was honored on a U.S. postage stamp on the occasion of what would have been his 75th birthday. His ashes are interred at Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas.