Jane Fonda to Receive 2023 Steinbeck Award

Author and Activist Jane Fonda has spoken of the themes of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and how they long ago instilled in her the need for justice, for freedom, for fairness, for equality. It is because of this that on Wednesday, September 13, Fonda will receive the 2023 Steinbeck Award during a Climate One program, live from the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. She will participate in an onstage conversation with Greg Dalton, founder of Climate One. The John Steinbeck Award will be presented to her by Daniel Rivers, executive director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. For further details and ticket information, please click here climateone.org/events/jane-fonda-lifetime-activism

When I closed The Grapes of Wrath, I was a different man.

The John Steinbeck 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.

First presented in 1996, the John Steinbeck Award is sponsored by the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Ted Cady, the chair of the Center’s award selection committee and Event Director for the Student Union, has organized all of the Award presentations and has brought each of the honorees to appreciate the Award’s meaning and the importance of Steinbeck’s legacy here at San José State.