John Steinbeck 1902-1968 The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939) was a prolific writer who showed great compassion for the ordinary person caught up in political and economic circumstances beyond his or her control. Often called The Bard of The People, his novels include Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, and East of Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, and lived here for the last five years of his life.