Fellows Books and Accolades
April 2024: 2024-25 Steinbeck Fellow Desiree S. Evans co-edited The Black Girl Survives in This One with Saraciea J. Fennell.
April 2024: 2021-22 Steinbeck Fellow Uche Okonkwo published her highly anticipated debut short story collection A Kind of Madness with Tin House Press.
April 2024: 2014-15 Steinbeck Fellow R.O. Kwon published her novel Exhibit to wide popular and critical acclaim.
August 2023: 2015-2016 Steinbeck Fellow Candace Eros Diaz has earned an international writing prize sponsored by the Sandra Carpenter Memorial Fund (SCMF) in partnership with the First Pages Prize (FPP). The SCMF Committee selected Eros Diaz for the award based on the quality of an excerpt from her manuscript, Cleofas, a semi-fictional account of the life of her great-grandmother, in Durango, Mexico, and the series of events that led to her migration to California.
June 2022: 2017-2018 Fellow Shruti Swamy has won the Gold Medal in fiction in the California Book Award for her book "The Archer" which is availble for purchase.
May 2022: 2013-14 Steinbeck Fellow Vanessa Hua published her nationally bestselling novel Forbidden City.
April 2022: 2020-2021 Fellow Meron Hadero's debut story collection A Down Home Meal For These Difficult Times has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2022 by Ms. Magazine, The Millions and Electric Literature.
April 2022: 2013-2014 Fellow Dallas Woodburn's book How to Make Paper When the World is Ending will be available to purchase on June 28, 2022.
April 2022: 2020-2021 Fellow Meron Hadero is the winner of a 2021 AKO Caine Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in literature, as well as a 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.
August 2021: 2020-2021 Fellow Meron Hadero's short story "The Street Sweep," originally published in Zyzzyva, won the 2021 AKO Caine Prize.
August 2021: 2020-2021 Fellow Anthony Veasna So's short story collection afterparties (Ecco) was posthumously published.
March 2021: 2019-2020 Fellow Gabriela Garcia published the novel Of Women and Salt (Flat Iron Books).
August 2018: 2013-2014 Fellow Vanessa Hua published the novel River of Stars (Ballantine).
July 2018: 2014-2015 Fellow R.O. Kwon published the novel The Incendiaries (Riverhead).
Spring 2018: 2009-2010 Fellow Andrew Milward received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
March 2018: 2011-2012 Fellow Kirstin Chen published the novel Bury What We Cannot Take (Little A).
February 2018: 2013-2014 Fellow Dallas Woodburn published a collection of short stories, Woman, Running Late in a Dress (Yellow Flag Press)
February 2018: 2008-2009 Fellow Jasmin Darznik published the novel Song of a Captive Bird (Ballantine).
Fall 2017: 2017-2018 Fellow Dominica Phetteplace received a Writers' Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation.
Spring 2016: 2014-2015 Fellow R.O. Kwon received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
July 2015: 2013-2014 Fellow Vanessa Hua's collection of short stories, The Responsibility of Deceit, will be published by Willow Books. Vanessa also won the San Francisco Foundation's 2014 James D. Phelan Award for the manuscript Loaves and Fishes.
April 2015: 2007-2008 Fellow Peter Nathaniel Malae has been awarded a 2015 Oregon Literary Fellowship in drama, on the strength of his new play The Question.
December 2013: 2005-2006 Fellow Sarah Houghteling received a 2014 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
2001-2002 Fellow Katie Rodger published Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: The Life and Letters of Edward F. Ricketts (2002) and Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts (2006).
2002-2003 Fellow Robert F. James is finishing the Outdoor Life Magazine Survival Manual (sched. 2012). He is Project Editor for this and for another book for Field & Stream magazine coming out in 2013.
2002-2003 Fellow Greta Manville's work on updating, researching, and compiling an online searchable bibliography of secondary literature on John Steinbeck was completed in 2007, resulting in a unique resource for an American author.
2004-2005 Fellow Diana Spechler, published Who By Fire (Harper Perennial 2008) and Skinny, (Harper Perennial 2011).
2007-2008 Fellow Dan White, published The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind--And Almost Found Myself--On the Pacific Trail (Harper Perennial 2008).
2005-2006 Fellow Sara Houghteling, published Pictures at an Exhibition (Knopf, 2009), reviewed in the New York Times. On April 15, 2010, the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford presented Houghteling with the 2009 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for her novel. Other Wallant Award winners include Cynthia Ozick, Curt Leviant, Chaim Potok and Myla Goldberg.
2006-2007 Fellow Charles McLeod was selected to receive a 2009 Pushcart Prize and his story "National Treasures" has been selected to appear in the anthology Fraudulent Artifacts (Norton 2012). Random House UK published his novel, American Weather (2011).
2007-2008 Fellow Lysley Tenorio received a 2008 Whiting Award, a $50,000 cash prize announced November 2008 at a ceremony at The Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Tenorio was also selected to appear in the 2010 edition of Best New American Voices.
2007-2008 Fellow Peter Nathaniel Malae published in 2007 a notable book story collection Teach the Free Man, and a novel What We Are (Grove 2010), as well as Nine True Love Stories (scheduled 2011 with Grove). What We Are was reviewed in the New York Times. Malae gave a public reading at SJSU on April 21, 2010.
2008-2009 Fellow Jasmin Darznik has published with Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books) The Good Daughter, her memoir of Iran, (2010), reviewed in the New York Times.
2009-2010 Fellow Katie Chase was selected to receive a 2009 Pushcart Prize.
2009-2010 Fellow Skip Horack’s short story collection, The Southern Cross, won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2008 Bakeless Fiction Prize and was published by Mariner Books in August 2009. His second novel is The Eden Hunter (2010).
2009-2010 Fellow Andrew Milward was selected to appear in the 2010 edition of Best New American Voices.
