American author and Nobel Prize winner born in Salinas in California. His mother was a teacher and his father worked in the regional administration in Monterey. His parents wanted him to study to become a lawyer, but already as a youth John decided to become an author. It is said that during his school years he wrote many stories which he sent anonymously to various newspapers and magazines. During his youth, he supported himself through odd jobs, such as a painter’s apprentice, fruit picker, and laboratory assistant, while studying at Stanford University periodically between 1919 and 1925. Although his studies did not lead to a degree, his experiences from his different places of work came to have great significance for his later authorship. Steinbeck lived the greater part of his life in California, but in 1925 he went to New York to establish himself as a journalist. He returned after a few meager years. During the Second World War, he was a war correspondent in North Africa and Italy for some time, and he reported from the incipient Vietnam War for a few years in the 60’s. Steinbeck was married three times and had two children with his second wife. He moved to the East Coast in the autumn of his life and died in a heart attack in New York.