Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat

When John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath, he gave his prize money to an aspiring writer trying to complete his first novel. When the money ran out and the novel was yet to be finished, Steinbeck offered him use of his home. With the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat, the Michener Center for Writers is proud to carry on the Nobel Laureate’s legacy of generous support for literary artists.

Located in Sag Harbor, New York, the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat sits on over an acre of breathtaking waterfront property and is anchored by old growth trees, a guest cottage, and Steinbeck’s personal writing gazebo that he named after Lancelot’s castle—Joyous Garde. The beautiful home is where he wrote his last three books (The Winter of Our Discontent, Travels with Charley, and America and Americans), and where he unexpectedly learned he’d won the Nobel Prize for Literature. (He was watching TV in the living room!) It’s filled with light, history, and inspiration, offering writers the ideal setting and rare solitude to make the work that only they can.

Because Sag Harbor meant so much to John and Elaine Steinbeck, every Fellow and Writer-in-Residence engages with the community during their time at the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat. Whether it’s a reading at the iconic Canio’s Bookstore or the historic John Jermain Memorial Library, a film screening and discussion at the gorgeously restored Sag Harbor Cinema or a read-through of a play at the exceptional Bay Street Theatre—or an event of the Fellow’s or Writer-in-Residence’s own devising—the opportunity for writers to interact with the village’s exceptional community of readers, writers, and artists is a highlight of every residency.

Currently, the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat offers fall and summer residencies. In the future, our hope is to offer spring residencies of varying lengths.

Fall residencies are open to alumni of the Michener Center for Writers. Applications for alumni will be open from 2/15/24 – 3/15/24 for the Fall 24 residency. More information about applying can be found here.

Summer residencies are open to those writers whose work has made a significant artistic and cultural impact. There is no application process, but rather we will collect Writer-in-Residence nominations from a range of literary artists.

To support our work and residencies at the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat please contact: alex.scull@austin.utexas.edu.

For information on the preservation of the home or to schedule a tour, please visit the Steinbeck House website.

Steinbeck Fellow Summer 2024

Hernan Diaz is the award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author of In the Distance, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Trust, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, and was named one of the New York Times’s Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. A critically acclaimed voice in American literature, Diaz captivates audiences with witty conversations about foreignness, his theory of genre, literary history, and what it means to do research for a novel.

Steinbeck Fellow Fall 2024

Eileen Sungyoo Chong is a writer from Chicagoland. Previously an event photographer, she received an MFA from The Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. She is the recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship and a 202Creates residency. During her stay at the Steinbeck House, she will be working on a novel.

Past Steinbeck Fellows

Fall 2023

Carrie R. Moore’s fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, New England Review, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, For Harriet, EPOCH, The Southern Review, and other publications. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Community of Writers, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. She earned her MFA in Fiction at the Michener Center for Writers, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature and served as Fiction Editor of Bat City Review.

Summer 2023

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times called “a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.” His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations).