Celebrate! Western Flyer Returns to Monterey Bay

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Western Flyerthe 77-foot fishing boat John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts took on their famous 1940 trip to the Sea of Cortezrecently returned to Monterey Bay after nearly a decade of restoration in Port Townsend, Washington. Built in 1937 to serve the commercial fishing industry and presently moored in Moss Landing, California, the Western Flyer will be welcomed back after a 75-year absence on November 4, 2023, with a day of family-friendly festivities around Cannery Row and Monterey’s Old Fisherman’s Wharf. Plans include live music, science and art activities, giveaways, merchandise for sale, and plenty of photo opportunities. The Western Flyer will then return to a life of research and education, and once again ply the waters of Monterey Bay and beyond. All this is the result of the vision of the marine biologist-businessman John Gregg, founding board member of the nonprofit Western Flyer Foundation.

Gregg purchased the boat, which had sunk several times over the decades, in 2015, launching the Western Flyer Foundation to save the severely damaged vessel and recruiting the Port Townsend Shipwrights Cooperative for the job. After eight years of labor, the vessel recently received a Classic Boat Award for its restored presence and sea-worthiness. Though the Western Flyer “gained notoriety from its research trip with John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, it’s had a long and storied past as a fishing boat,” Gregg said. “Now restored with a hybrid diesel-electric engine and state-of-the-art marine lab, the Western Flyer symbolizes a bridge linking Monterey Bay’s commercial fishing heritage with its leadership in marine science and education.” Gregg said the foundation’s vision is for the revitalized Western Flyer to stir curiosity by “connecting art and science in the spirit of John Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, and their journey [recounted by Steinbeck and Ricketts in Sea of Cortez, 1941]. The foundation’s tide-pooling, classroom teaching, and on-board programs will introduce students to a renowned coastal ecosystem that many have experienced only indirectly, or not at all.”

November 4 activities begin at 11:00 a.m. and include a welcoming ceremony at the end of Old Fisherman’s Wharf, a boat parade, and tours of the Western Flyer, all free. On hand for the festivities will be the Alaska artist and Guggenheim Fellow Ray Troll, who created the colorful mural panels at the former facility of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) overlooking Steinbeck’s Great Tide Pool in Pacific Grove. The Center for Ocean Art, Science and Technology (COAST)—a nonprofit organization, like the Western Flyer Foundation—seeks to preserve Troll’s work while converting the NOAA building into a research center blending art and science. A fan of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, Troll put the Western Flyer in the picture when he painted the historic mural.

Photo of Western Flyer courtesy National Fisherman magazine.

Celebrating Woody Guthrie’s Grapes of Wrath Connection

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“Woody is Just Woody,” an exhibition expressing the inspired connection between the author of The Grapes of Wrath and the folk singer Woody Guthrie, is on display through August 25, 2023, in the fifth floor art gallery of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at San Jose State University. Organized by Peter Van Coutren, curator of San Jose State’s John Steinbeck collection, it features sculpture by Lew Aytes (see photo) and poster-size covers from foreign-language editions of John Steinbeck’s 1939 masterpiece. The exhibition is open to the public from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. weekdays and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays.

San Jose State Hosts Steinbeck Conference

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Reading, teaching, and translating Steinbeck, the subject of San Jose State University’s first Steinbeck conference since 2019, attracted a reported 30 attendees to the downtown San Jose, California campus, March 22-24, 2023. Many if not most papers and panelists were virtual, and at least one speaker was pre-recorded, giving the gathering a sketchy, spare feel. But a pair of in-person presentations, accessed by jockeying between two concurrent sessions, stimulated conversation and served as a reminder of conferences past to those who remembered 2013 and 2016. Susan Shillnglaw (in photo) profiled Toni Jackson, Ed Ricketts’s live-in partner and a familiar figure around 1930s and ’40s Pacific Grove who, like Steinbeck’s spouse Carol Henning, served as frequent typist and sometimes-editor in the relationship. Carrying on the tradition of research on Steinbeck by readers outside the academy, Daniel Levin—a chemist by training—traced the literary and theological lineage of timshel, the free-will-vs.-fate concept borrowed by Steinbeck from Talmudic Judaism in East of Eden.

Jacqueline Woodson to Receive John Steinbeck Award on October 18, 2022

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Together with the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University will present the 2022 John Steinbeck “In the Souls of the People” Award to Jacqueline Woodson, author of the 2014 memoir novel Brown Girl Dreaming. The award is given to writers, artists, thinkers, and activists whose work captures Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes; and the phrase “in the souls of the people” comes from Chapter 25 of The Grapes of Wrath. Woodson is the recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship and the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Brown Girl Dreaming, a New York Times bestseller, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newberry Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Woodson is also the author of Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller; Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist; and books for young readers including Before the Ever After, The Year We Learned to FlyThe Day You Begin, and Harbor Me. The October 18, 2002 awards ceremony will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Student Union Theater on the San Jose State campus in downtown San Jose, California. During the event Woodson will have an onstage conversation with Michele Elam, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities at Stanford University. The 7:00 p.m. event is free.

Propose a Paper or Panel for March 22-24, 2023 Steinbeck Conference at San Jose State

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San Jose State University invites proposals for papers and panels on reading, teaching, and translating John Steinbeck for the Steinbeck conference to be held March 22-24, 2023 at San Jose State. Said Daniel Rivers, assistant professor of American studies and literature and newly appointed director of the university’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies: “We invite proposals from varied disciplines and critical frameworks, including but not limited to literary/cultural studies, comparative literature, media studies, secondary and post-secondary education, psychology, political science, sociology, ecology, and marine biology. Potential topics include comparative studies of Steinbeck and post-Steinbeck writers, issues in translating Steinbeck’s works into other languages, stage/film/video adaptations, and approaches to teaching Steinbeck in contemporary classrooms.”

Email a 300-word or less abstract of the paper you propose to present, along with your biography of 200 words or less, to Steinbeck@sjsu.edu with the subject line “Steinbeck Conference 2023 Submission, [your last name].” If you are interested in suggesting a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or roundtable session for the conference, note the title, the format, and the names of your co-presenters in your online submission to the same address. If you are interested in soliciting participants for your proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable session, email your topic and request with the subject line “Panel CFP Steinbeck Conference 2023.” Your topic and invitation will be shared with the center’s mailing list. The deadline for all submissions is November 15, 2022.

Above: John Steinbeck caricature by David Levine.

Zoom into John Steinbeck’s 120th Birthday This Tuesday

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Sunday, February 27, 2022, marks the 120th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s birth in Salinas, California. To celebrate this occasion, the Monterey Public Library and the Martha Heasley Cox Centerfor Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University are collaborating on a birthday conversation that brings together a group of established and emerging Steinbeckians. Join us on Tuesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time for a celebration featuring Susan Shillinglaw (author of Carol and John Steinbeck and A Journey into Steinbeck’s California); Robert DeMott (author of Steinbeck’s Typewriter: Essays on His Art); Keenan Norris (director of San Jose State University’s Steinbeck Fellows Program); and Daniel Rivers (director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center). Along with discussing favorite moments and persistent questions from Steinbeck’s work, the panelists will reflect on the author’s creative legacy and enduring relevance for the 21st century. This event takes place on Zoom, and registration closes an hour prior to the program. The Zoom access information will be sent to registered participants shortly before the program begins. Use of a video camera and level of participation are at your discretion. You can also use Zoom’s phone feature to call and listen in to the conversation.

 

Salinas Festival Celebrates Close Mexican Connection

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John Steinbeck was no accidental tourist when it came to the Republic of Mexico. Although he later expressed a preference for the mother culture of Spain, he traveled to Mexico early and often for personal and professional purposes: for escape and recovery, for literary and film material, and (some speculate) for at least one abortion for at least one of his three wives. Current criticism faults him for the absence of Mexicans, blacks, and other non-white characters in his 1939 protest novel The Grapes of Wrath, but four works from the following decade—The Forgotten Village and Sea of Cortez (1941), The Pearl (1947), and Viva Zapata (1952)—reflect Steinbeck’s fascination with the history and people of a country that was less than a day’s drive but utterly different from his hometown of Salinas, California. On October 2-3, 2021, the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas will celebrate Steinbeck’s Mexican connection with a schedule of in-person and online activities packaged and presented as Steinbeck and Mexico and priced at $20 a day ($17 for seniors). In addition to bingo, mural painting, and movies, the 40th annual Steinbeck festival includes online presentations by Richard Astro and Donald Kohrs on the writing of Sea of Cortez and by Vincent Parker on teaching Steinbeck in the 21st century. (The annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas used to take place in the spring to overlap with the triennial Steinbeck conference at San Jose State University, where discussion has begun about convening another conference in 2022.)

 

John Steinbeck Awardees Discuss “Giving Back”

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A pair of celebrity philanthropists with marquee humanitarian projects and progressive political agendas will discuss “Giving Back” in a live-stream event that will end with one receiving the 2020 John Steinbeck Award, given by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies “to honor an artist, thinker, activist who has made a significant contribution to causes that matter to the common person.” Sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of California, the online event features master chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, recipient of this year’s award, and the actor Sean Penn, who won in 2004. Tickets to the November 30 live-stream are $5.00 for Commonwealth Club members and $10.00 for non-members.

Composite image of José Andrés and Sean Penn courtesy Commonwealth Club of California.

Zoom into Monterey Library’s “Cannery Row Days” Party

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William Souder, John Steinbeck Biographer

susan-shillinglaw-john-steinbeckThe author of Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (William Souder, above) joins an all-star speaker lineup for the Monterey Library’s 75th anniversary publication party for Cannery Row, the “poisoned cream puff” of a novel resented by locals when it appeared but revered by readers ever since for its humorous depiction of human society—high and low—along Monterey’s historic waterfront. The six-week-long celebration kicked off on September 16 with a Zoom webinar led by veteran Steinbeck scholars Robert DeMott and Susan Shillinglaw (in photo left) and by Gerry Low-Sabado, a fifth generation Monterey native and well-known Chinese-American community preservationist. The six-week-long celebration includes lectures, films, and special events and ends on November 7 with public readings, virtual tours of Cannery Row, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Ed Ricketts’s Pacific Biological Laboratories—the latter led by Shillinglaw and Mike Guardino of the Cannery Row Foundation—and a panel discussion of “Why We Read Cannery Row in 2020” that includes Souder; Donald Kohrs, librarian and archivist of the nearby Hopkins Marine Station; and Katie Rodgers, the pioneering editor of Ricketts’s letters, Renaissance Man of Cannery Row, and of Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts. Registration for California’s “Cannery Row Days: A Novel Celebration” is free and open to the public (thanks to Zoom) wherever in the world COVID-19 days may have you cornered. Sessions in the series will be recorded and available for viewing at the Monterey Library website.

Making a Virtue of Necessity, Virtual John Steinbeck Festival Moves Online

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Making a virtue of necessity, officials at the National Steinbeck Center have announced that the August 1-2, 2020 Steinbeck Festival will move online, motivated by COVID-19 and the need to think globally while acting locally to support the arts in John Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas, California. An annual event for more than a quarter of a century, the festival has experimented with dates, formats, and marketing strategies in the past, all in an effort to engage two contrasting constituencies—the multicultural community of Cannery Row and California’s Central Coast; fans of Steinbeck’s fiction from other states and countries—in honoring the famous local author who attracted the latter during his life by celebrating the former in his work. “Looking back, I don’t know why we haven’t done this before,” notes Michele Speich, the center’s director, of plans for this year’s “virtual platform” event. “We have a global audience, and we’re thrilled now to be able to share the Festival on a worldwide level and bring [it] straight to everyone’s home.” For speaker and schedule information, visit the Virtual Steinbeck Country United Global Festival sign-up page.