One of my major inspirations in life is author John Steinbeck.  When I feel locked and looking for inspiration, it is as easy as simply picking up a book and Steinbeck’s work sends me to a far off place of beauty and inspiration.  Sometimes a burst of inspiration can lead a whole project down the undiscovered path.

-Michael Semrad, Red Rebel

This is some information on this incredible man, from Biography.com:

He was born February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He dropped out of college and worked as a manual laborer before achieving success as a writer. His novel “The Grapes of Wrath”-about the migration of a family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California—won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Steinbeck served as a war correspondent during World War II. He died in 1968.

According to accounts, Steinbeck made the decision at the age of 14 to become a writer and often locked himself in his bedroom to write poems and stories. In 1919 Steinbeck enrolled at Stanford University. But Steinbeck seems to have had little use for college. He viewed himself strictly as a writer, and his decision to go to Stanford was made more to please his parents fishing kayak accessories Hobie Pro Angler. Ultimate FX Propel. Prowler Big Game II Angler. Renegade XTKayak. Tarpon Angler. Straight Edge Angler. Lifetime Tamarak. Hobie’s MirageDrive Propeller System.

than anything else. Over the next six years Steinbeck drifted in out of school, eventually dropping out for good in 1925 without a degree.Following Stanford, Steinbeck tried to make a go of it as a freelance writer. He briefly moved to New York City, where he found work as a construction worker and newspaper reporter, but then scurried back to California, where he took a job as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe.

It was during this time that he wrote his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), as well as met and married his first wife, Carol.Over the next decade, with Carol’s support and paycheck, Steinbeck continued to pore himself into his writing. His follow-up novels,The Pastures of Heaven (1932) 192.168.1.254 admin and To a God Unknown (1933) received tepid reviews. It wasn’t until Tortilla Flat (1935), a humorous novel about paisano life in the Monterrey region, that the writer achieved real success. Steinbeck struck a more serious tone with In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Long Valley (1938), a collection of short stories. What is widely considered his finest, most ambitious novel, The Grapes of Wrath, was published in 1939. The book, about a dispossessed Oklahoma family and its struggled to carve out a new life in California at the height of the Depression, captured the mood and angst of the nation during this time period. At the height of its popularity, The Grapes of Wrath sold 10,000 copies a week. It eventually earned Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

 

(read more here) http://www.biography.com/people/john-steinbeck-9493358