Steinbeck Star Rises to the Occasion: Susan Shillinglaw Named Interim Director of National Steinbeck Center

Susan Shillinglaw has a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, a bibliography as long as your arm, and star status as an internationally celebrated professor of English at San Jose State University, where she teaches a course devoted to John Steinbeck and formerly served as director of San Jose State University’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. No disrespect intended, but years after earning her UNC-Chapel Hill degree she looks more like a graduate student than a “senior scholar,” living proof that people who love their work really do keep their youth.

No disrespect intended, but years after earning her UNC-Chapel Hill degree Susan looks more like a graduate student than a ‘senior scholar.’

Watching Susan in action, you wonder when she sleeps—organizing conferences, writing books, editing reissues of John Steinbeck works famous for the fluent style of her helpful introductions. She lives with her husband, a marine biologist, in laid-back Pacific Grove, John Steinbeck’s former home, but clocks more frequent-flyer miles on Steinbeck business than some CEOs. Her management portfolio now includes the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, where she was named interim director following Colleen Bailey’s appointment as managing director of the Monterey Jazz Festival.

She lives with her husband in laid-back Pacific Grove, but clocks more frequent-flyer miles on Steinbeck business than some CEOs.

From its inception, Susan has served as an organizer, board member, and resident expert for the Salinas center, which has struggled against local odds to live up to its national name. The Monterey County Weekly reported last week on the slow pace of the lease-back deal to relieve finances by selling the center’s downtown Salinas building to San Jose State University’s sister school, California State Monterey Bay, saying of Susan that “she doesn’t like the term ‘limbo.’ It implies inactivity, and she say’s that’s not what’s happening.”

Susan has served as an organizer, board member, and resident expert for the Salinas center, which has struggled against local odds to live up to its national name.

According to the newspaper, Susan wants to increase active collaboration between the Steinbeck center at San Jose State University where she teaches and the one in Salinas, California, a distinction she understands can be confusing to outsiders, despite the physical and cultural distance between the two venues: “She wants to join the forces of the San Jose State and Salinas Steinbeck Centers next year in a synergistic partnership to share programming, attendance and advertising.”

‘She wants to join the forces of the San Jose State and Salinas Steinbeck Centers next year in a synergistic partnership to share programming, attendance and advertising.’

Speaking as a friend of Susan’s and a fellow PhD-graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, I can’t imagine anyone better prepared by education, experience, or energy to bridge existing gaps and make John Steinbeck, her life’s work, more accessible to the public.