Kyoko Ariki is professor of English at Shujitsu University in Okayama, Japan. She is the author of The Main Thematic Current in John Steinbeck's Works: A Positive View of Man's Survival (2002) and co-editor of Re-Reading John Steinbeck (2001). In 2006 she received the Burkhardt Award for the Outstanding Steinbeck Scholar of the Year.