Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver will receive San José State University's 2026 In the Souls of the People John Steinbeck Award on Thursday, with the ceremony set for the Hammer Theatre in downtown San José. The event, scheduled from 7 to 8:30 p.m., is nearly sold out, according to The Mercury News.
Kingsolver will take the stage to read from her latest book, “Partita,” according to San José State University. The novel was inspired by Kingsolver's lifelong love of classical piano, and SJSU student pianist Crystal Liong will perform a selection of piano pieces featured in the book during the event. An awards ceremony will follow the live performance, with Nick Taylor, director of the university's Center for Steinbeck Studies and an SJSU English professor, presenting Kingsolver with the honor.
A Prize Built on Steinbeck's Empathy
The John Steinbeck Award, which began in 1996, is given annually by San José State's Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies to writers, thinkers, artists and activists. Per the event website, the prize recognizes work that captures Steinbeck's empathy, commitment to democratic values and belief in the dignity of people at society's fringes. Proceeds from Thursday's event will benefit Steinbeck in the Schools, an SJSU program that offers curriculum for K-12 students and teachers, the university's newsroom notes.
Past recipients have included Bruce Springsteen, Dolores Huerta, Ken Burns, Ruby Bridges, Jacqueline Woodson, José Andrés, Joan Baez and Jane Fonda, who accepted the award in 2023. That ceremony, held in San Francisco, is documented by SJSU's newsroom, which has chronicled the award's roster of honorees for years.
From Rural Kentucky to Literary Honors
Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and now lives in southwestern Virginia, according to the National Book Foundation. She is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including “Unsheltered,” “The Bean Trees” and “The Poisonwood Bible,” and her writing frequently turns to social justice, biodiversity and the natural world. The foundation's announcement describes her work as one that examines complex issues of social justice, exalts the natural world and explores progressive social change.
Her honors stack up quickly: the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Demon Copperhead,” the National Humanities Medal, and distinction as the first person to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice. In 2024, the National Book Foundation named her the 37th recipient of its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a lifetime-achievement honor the foundation bestows on authors whose body of work has left a lasting mark on American literature.
A Prize With Her Own Name On It
Kingsolver's commitment to socially engaged fiction predates Thursday's ceremony by more than two decades. In 2000, she launched and funded a biennial Bellwether fiction prize specifically to promote literature that grapples with social issues, a detail the university's newsroom highlights as part of her broader legacy supporting writers in the same vein as the Steinbeck Award itself.
Thursday's gathering at the Hammer Theatre, located at 101 Paseo De San Antonio in downtown San José, places Kingsolver alongside a growing list of authors and activists SJSU has honored in Steinbeck's name. With the performance, reading and ceremony folded into a single evening, the university is framing the night as both a literary tribute and a fundraiser for the next generation of students studying Steinbeck's work in Bay Area classrooms.
