John Steinbeck was a California author. A giant in the field, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.

During his writing career, he authored thirty-three books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first seventy-five years after it was published, it sold fourteen million copies.

Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.