Contributors
- Contributors
tom barden is professor emeritus of English and former Dean of the Honors College at the University of Toledo. His research areas are American folklore and American literature, with a focus on John Steinbeck. His book-length works include Weevils in the Wheat: Interview with Virginia Ex-Slaves, The Travels of Peter Woodhouse, Virginia Folk Legends, Hungarian American Toledo, and Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War. In retirement, he teaches as an adjunct instructor at Lourdes University in Sylvania, Ohio.
pete barraza is a graduate of University of Californiat, Los Angeles, and teaches American Literature at the Punahou Academy in Honolulu. In addition to teaching a seminar-like course focusing on the works of John Steinbeck, he also teaches Jazz Era Literature, an experiential course that looks at the relationship between literature and music. He is excited to be returning home to Southern California in the fall, where he will be teaching AP English and California Literature at Santa Monica High School. Currently he is working on a collection of poems and essays about the hybridity of growing up in Los Angeles.
micah conkling teaches high school English at Kansas City Christian School in Prairie Village, Kansas. He earned a Masters of Arts degree in English at West Virginia University in 2014. His scholarly interests include the literature of the American South and religion in the works of John Steinbeck.
renata dalmaso is a PhD candidate in English at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, and is currently studying graphic memoirs and disability, after spending a year as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan. She dedicated her Masters thesis to the study of John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath, also at UFSC. She has published recently in the International Journal of Comic Art and in two collections of essays about Neil Gaiman and feminisms. Over the past years she has presented papers in conferences [End Page 113] covering the fields of gender, feminism, and comics in Dublin, Boston, San Jose, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Taipei.
alec gilmore is a UK Baptist minister, author and lecturer, with special interest in preaching and biblical interpretation, especially the Old Testament and secular literature. Former editor of Lutterworth Press and Senior Research Fellow at the International Bible Theological Seminary in Prague, his literary output includes Preaching as Theatre (London: SCM, 1996) and A Concise Dictionary of Bible Origins and Interpretation (London: T & T Clark/Continuum, 2007), and several articles on Steinbeck following research into the life and work of Steinbeck at San José State and Stanford Universities.
mimi reisel gladstein is the author of five books and co-editor of two. She is past president of the John Steinbeck Society of America and has been recipient of both the John J. and Angeline Pruis Award for teaching and the Burkhardt Award for Steinbeck scholarship. Her scholarly articles, covering subjects as diverse as the Harry Potter series and bilingual wordplay in Hemingway and Steinbeck, have been translated and published in both Mexico and Japan. At the University of Texas at El Paso she has served as Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, Chair of the English Department, Chair of Theatre, Dance, and Film and was first Director of the Women’s Studies Program.
barbara a. heavilin is author or editor of several books and articles on Steinbeck and The Quaker Presence in America. She is a professor emeritus of Taylor University, currently teaches literature classes at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and serves as Editor in Chief of Steinbeck Review. Her latest book is From an Existential Vacuum to a Tragic Optimism: The Search for Meaning and Presence of God in Modern Literature (Cambridge Scholars Press 2013), and she is writing a book on Steinbeck’s epic vision of America in three major novels.
kathleen hicks is a lecturer in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she is the online education coordinator for writing programs. She also serves as the “Steinbeck Today” editor and bibliographer for the Steinbeck Review.
billy j. (bill) Lancaster is a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University-Commerce, where he teaches literature and first-year...
