In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Reminiscence of Martha
  • Nick Taylor (bio)

In the late 1990s, Martha Heasley Cox was inspired to create a fellowship program at San José State University that would bring together scholars from all of the disciplines Steinbeck practiced—including fiction writing, drama, journalism, and marine biology. She bestowed an endowment to allow the University to invite two or three such scholars to San José for campus residencies, during which they would interact with one another and make regular presentations to the University community. The program has been remarkably successful. Since 2001 the Steinbeck Fellows program has awarded over $360,000 to three dozen writers and scholars, who collectively have gone on to publish twenty-three books and earn numerous additional distinctions, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rona Jaffe Foundation.

I began coordinating the Fellows program in 2012. A major part of the job was reading and evaluating the hundred-plus applications we received every year. I typically narrowed the field to a dozen finalists before convening a selection committee to make the final decisions. One of the most active members of the committee was Martha—at that time ninety-three years old and still as sharp and discerning as ever.

I remember the time when my mobile phone rang at nine o’clock on a Wednesday evening. It was Martha: “Nick,” she said in her distinctive Arkansas accent, “I have a question about one of these applicants. It says she received her bachelor’s degree in nineteen eighty-[something]. By my calculation, that makes her forty-[something]. If I’m not mistaken, that is significantly older than the other applicants. I just wanted you to be aware.”

Of course, Martha was right. But age has no bearing on talent. The applicant, Marian Palaia, was somewhat older than the others in the pool of finalists. I thanked Martha for her diligence and the next day offered Marian a fellowship. Three years later her first novel, The Given World, was published by Simon & Schuster. This past December it was long-listed for the 2016 PEN/Bingham [End Page 79] Prize for Debut Fiction. Such is Martha’s continuing legacy to scholarship, to the arts, to Steinbeck. [End Page 80]

Nick Taylor

nick taylor is Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University and Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. He is the author of the novels The Disagreement, Father Junípero’s Confessor, and (as T. T. Monday) The Setup Man.

...

pdf

Share