Even as John Steinbeck’s diverse body of work has played an essential role in identifying and interpreting the major issues of the past century, his narratives and insights remain radically relevant to our present moment, as communities across the world navigate unprecedented social, political, economic, medical, and ecological challenges. Since Steinbeck’s significance is best communicated to contemporary audiences through the practices of reading, teaching, and translation, the 2023 conference will focus on how these forms of engagement help us better understand and share Steinbeck’s relevance to our contemporary world.The International Steinbeck Society invites abstract proposals from varied disciplines and critical frameworks, including but not limited to literary/cultural studies, comparative literature, media studies, secondary and postsecondary 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, stage/film/video adaptations, and approaches to teaching Steinbeck in contemporary classrooms.We are also pleased to invite undergraduate students to participate in a poster session focused on sharing their analysis of, and approaches to, the author’s works, context, and enduring relevance. Undergraduates who are interested in attending the conference are encouraged to speak with their professors about possibilities for funding that may be available through their university. Professors who are interested in integrating an assignment related to the conference into their classroom are encouraged to direct any questions about the poster session to steinbeck@sjsu.edu.For traditional presentations, please email your abstract of up to three hundred words, as well as a short bio (up to two hundred words), to Steinbeck@sjsu.edu with the subject line “Steinbeck Conference 2023 Submission, [last name].” If you are interested in submitting a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or roundtable session, please note your panel title, format, and the names of your co-presenters in your submission.If you are interested in soliciting participants for a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or roundtable session, please send your topic and request to the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at Steinbeck@sjsu.edu with the subject line “Panel CFP Steinbeck Conference 2023.” We will then share your topic and call for participants with the Center’s mailing list.All abstract proposals are due by December 15, 2022.The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University has named six Steinbeck Fellows for the 2022–2023 academic year: Vivian Ewing, Amanda Mei Kim, Meghana Mysore, Bobuq Sayed, Reena Shah, and Annie Vy Trinh.The Steinbeck Fellowship program offers emerging writers of any age and background a $15,000 fellowship to finish a significant writing project. Named in honor of author John Steinbeck, the program is guided by his lifetime of work in literature, the media, and environmental activism. The Steinbeck Fellows program was endowed through the generosity of SJSU Professor Emerita Martha Heasley Cox.The next deadline for applications is January 3, 2023. For eligibility and application instructions, visit https://www.sjsu.edu/steinbeck/fellows/steinbeckfellows_apply/.Vivian Ewing is a writer and journalist from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Oregon. She has reported for the New York Times and her fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Teeth Magazine, Papersafe Magazine, and elsewhere. Vivian’s work has received support from Mary Sky, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the Community of Writers Conference at Squaw Valley. She is currently writing a novel about motherhood.Amanda Mei Kim writes about the way that cultural power, racism, nature, and capitalism weave through the lives of rural Californians of color. She is the recipient of the Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellowship, the California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellowship, and the Phelan Award. She has completed residencies at Mesa Refuge, Yefe Nof, Hedgebrook, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her work has appeared in Brick, LitHub, and PANK and is forthcoming in an anthology of BIPOC women writers. Her professional work focuses on equity, agriculture, and narrative. She is writing a memoir about growing up on a tenant farm in California.Meghana Mysore, from Portland, Oregon, is a graduate of Yale University and a creative writing MFA candidate at Hollins University, where she holds a graduate assistantship and teaching fellowship. The second-place winner in prose in the 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Contest, Mysore was also the runner-up for the 2021 Melanie Hook Rice Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Hollins nominee in fiction for the 2022 AWP Intro Journals Project. Mysore’s writing has been published in the Yale Review, the Boston Review, The Rumpus, the Indiana Review, wildness, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, and the anthology A World Out of Reach (Yale University Press). The recipient of fellowships and support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Mysore is at work on a novel exploring loss, desire, and joy in three generations of an Indian-American family.Bobuq Sayed is a queer Afghan Australian writer with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Miami, where they were a James A. Michener Fellow. They have received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Tin House, Kundiman, and VONA/Voices, and their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in New Australian Fiction 2022, Gulf Coast, Collisions: Fictions of the Future, Meanjin, and The Rumpus. They are the coeditor of an anthology set for publication in mid-2022 called Nothing to Hide: Voices from Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen and Unwin), and they are completing a novel about queer and trans exiles living in Istanbul, Turkey.Reena Shah has been selected as a Tin House Scholar, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellow, Crossfields Fellow at Cuttyhunk, and a Fulbright Scholar. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Waxwing Magazine, Midnight Breakfast, the BBC, Joyland Magazine, The Guardian, National Geographic, American Prospect, Third Coast, Writer’s Digest, Texas Review, Chalkbeat, and DNA India, among others. Shah was the winner of the 2019 Third Coast Fiction Prize and the 2019 Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Award.Annie Trinh holds an MFA from the University of Kansas and an MA from Mississippi State University. Her fiction has appeared in the New Ohio Review, Joyland, Passages North, and several other venues. She earned a Pushcart nomination and was selected as a finalist for a Best of the Net award in nonfiction. She has been supported by Kundiman, VONA, and Key West Literary Seminar. Trinh’s work centers on the Vietnamese Diaspora, and she is completing a short story collection.Thanks to a generous donation from C. Suzette Ditsky, emerging Steinbeck scholars can apply to utilize the outstanding resources in the Ball State University Libraries. The Steinbeck Research Fund has established in honor of Mrs. Ditsky’s late husband, John, who passed away in 2006. Dr. Tetsumaro Hayashi, a longtime friend, said, “He was first and foremost a passionate and dedicated scholar, teacher, and mentor.” Hayashi commented that the Research Fund was “established to honor Ditsky’s long-established legacy of extending a helping hand to emerging Steinbeck Scholars.”Recipients will spend a minimum of five days doing intensive research using the Steinbeck collections or other materials at the Ball State University Libraries. The resulting research must be submitted for publication in a professional, scholarly, Steinbeck-related journal and/or presented at a Steinbeck Conference, convention, or lecture at a university.Applicants should submit a Steinbeck-related research proposal (minimum of two pages), a curriculum vitae, a completed application form (available at https://bsu.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=48465493 and two letters of recommendation from colleagues, faculty members, or others who can speak to academic qualifications. More details, including guidance for drafting your application, can be found on the application document itself. Completed applications can be emailed directly to libarchives@bsu.edu.In memory of Louis Owens, the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies established this award to honor undergraduate and graduate student work on Steinbeck and related subjects. Undergraduate and graduate students may submit, or faculty may submit on their behalf.Send as attachment to steinbeck@sjsu.edu or by regular mail to:The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University continues to coordinate the Steinbeck Letters Project, which aims to create a searchable database listing of John Steinbeck’s letters starting with those in the Center’s possession.Anyone interested in more information or contributing to this project, please contact us at steinbeck@sjsu.edu.The Steinbeck in the Schools program hosted at the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University has launched a new website that can be found at http://steinbeckintheschools.com/. Along with featuring lesson plans and contextual entries ranging from biography to geography, this redesigned site is optimized for smart devices and perfect for use in K–12 and college classrooms.Author and MacArthur Fellow Jacqueline Woodson will accept the John Steinbeck “In the Souls of the People” Award at an event at San José State University Student Union Theater on Tuesday, October 18, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. (PDT).Woodson is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which won the National Book Award as well as the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. She also wrote the adult books Red at the Bone, a New York Times bestseller; and Another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist. Her dozens of books for young readers include the Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After and the Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster. Woodson is also a recipient of the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and she was the 2018–19 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.The event will feature Woodson in conversation with SJSU Assistant Professor of African American Studies Jalylah Burrell and will be livestreamed for accessibility. More info can be found at the website of the Martha Heasley Center for Steinbeck Studies at http://steinbeck.com/.Does your university or organization have an announcement to share with the Steinbeck studies community? Email your entries to Daniel Rivers (Daniel.Rivers@sjsu.edu) by July 10 (for the fall issue) or January 10 (for the spring issue).