The author John Steinbeck faced many obstacles and accomplishments during his education and his career as an author. John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902. During his childhood John Steinbeck spent most of his summers as a hired farm hand.

John Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and later enrolled in Stanford University. During his time at Stanford University John Steinbeck had English major, but pursued a program of independent study. Also he worked at many jobs but finally left Stanford University in 1925. After he left college he went to pursue a writing career in New York.

After being unsuccessful in publishing any of his books, John Steinbeck had returned to California. John Steinbeck published his first novel, Cup of Gold, in 1929 attracted little attention as a writer. He also published two sequels to, Cup of Gold, called, The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown. These two novels were also paid little attention to by the literary world.

John Steinbeck then married his first wife, Carol Henning in 1930. They then moved to Pacific Grove where materials for the books, Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row, were gathered. The book Tortilla Flat was published in 1935, and Cannery Row was published in 1945. During World War II John Steinbeck was a war correspondent for the New Work Herald Tribune. He then collected some of his dispatches and made them into a book named, Once There was a War.

The book Tortilla Flat then received the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal for best novel by a California author. John Steinbeck's book The Grapes of Wrath (1939) won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1962 John Steinbeck also won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

John Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968 at New York City with his third wife, Elaine Steinbeck, and their son Thomas. When John Steinbeck died, his ashes were placed in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas, California.