Draft:William Saroyan Foundation

• Comment: Could be merged into the existing William Saroyan article? qcne (talk) 15:26, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

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The William Saroyan Foundation is a private nonprofit organization established in 1966 by Pulitzer Prize– and Academy Award–winning Armenian-American writer William Saroyan. Headquartered in San Francisco, the Foundation preserves and promotes Saroyan's literary and artistic legacy, supports emerging writers and cultural initiatives in the United States and Armenia, and funds charitable programs benefiting students and communities in both countries.

History

William Saroyan was one of the most prominent and prolific literary figures of mid-20th century America, working across an unusually wide range of forms. He burst onto the literary scene in 1934 with the short story "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," published in Story magazine to immediate critical acclaim, and within four years had published six books and had three plays that ran sequentially on Broadway. His 1939 play The Time of Your Life won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — which Saroyan declined on principle — and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. His 1943 screenplay The Human Comedy, produced by MGM, won the Academy Award for Best Original Story and became one of the most popular films of the war years. His short story collection My Name Is Aram (1940) was an international bestseller and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. In 1951, Saroyan co-wrote "Come On-a My House" with his cousin Ross Bagdasarian, which became a number-one hit for Rosemary Clooney and one of the best-selling singles of the year. In parallel with his literary career, Saroyan was a highly industrious fine artist, producing hundreds of drawings and watercolor paintings across five decades, influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Chinese brush drawing, and the calligraphic work of Mark Tobey. He continued to write and publish until his death in 1981, leaving behind a body of work encompassing novels, plays, short stories, memoirs, screenplays, songs, and visual art.

The Foundation was established on December 30, 1966, with Saroyan and his siblings Henry and Cosette Saroyan as co-signers of the Articles of Incorporation. Among its first acts, the Foundation accepted a deed of trust from Saroyan that included the manuscript of The Time of Your Life and sixteen short stories, to be made publicly available for literary and educational purposes.

After Saroyan's death in 1981, he bequeathed his entire literary estate to the Foundation. His longtime friend and executor Robert Setrakian assumed leadership, overseeing the organization of Saroyan's archive and collecting materials from cities including Paris, San Francisco, Fresno, Berkeley, and Malibu. Over the following fifteen years, the Foundation managed the literary estate directly, negotiating rights for hundreds of publications and adaptations of Saroyan's work for stage, screen, radio, and broadcast across dozens of countries.

Partnership with Stanford University

In 1996, the Foundation transferred Saroyan's complete literary archive to Stanford University Libraries, consolidating holdings that had been distributed across multiple institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley and California State University, Fresno. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the transfer under the headline "Stanford Gets Saroyan Writings and Rubber Bands," noting the significance of bringing the collection together in a single research institution. The Palo Alto Weekly also covered the transfer in May 1996. The following year, the New York Times reported on the archive in a piece titled "Quarter for His Thoughts: Saroyan Memorabilia," describing the scope of the collection now accessible to scholars at Stanford.

The collection, cataloged as M0870 and housed in the Department of Special Collections at the Cecil H. Green Library, includes Saroyan's published and unpublished writings, diaries, letters, manuscripts, scrapbooks, drawings, and financial and legal records. The complete archive is accessible to researchers at Stanford University Libraries.

Programs

William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Since 2003, the Foundation has partnered with Stanford University Libraries to sponsor the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, a biennial award recognizing newly published works of fiction and nonfiction. The prize is intended to encourage new and emerging writers rather than to recognize established literary figures. Two awards of $5,000 each are given, one in fiction and one in nonfiction, with judges drawn from prominent writers and Stanford alumni. Nearly 250 volunteers drawn from the Stanford Alumni Association participate as first-round readers. Past winners and finalists have included recipients of the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the California Book Award, and other major literary honors.

SaroyanDays

In September 2025, the Foundation presented SaroyanDays, a weeklong cultural festival held in Yerevan, Armenia, from September 4 to 11. The event was announced jointly with the U.S. Embassy Yerevan, which co-presented the program alongside the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia. The program unveiled twenty-two previously unpublished Saroyan stories and an exhibition of more than one hundred of Saroyan's paintings — described as the largest release of new Saroyan material in more than two decades. Events included art exhibitions, theatrical performances, film screenings, literary discussions, and a young artists' showcase co-hosted with Creative Armenia and AGBU.

The American University of Armenia hosted an evening of readings on September 9 as part of the festival, where Foundation President Scott Setrakian spoke about Saroyan's literary legacy and a scholarship recipient shared remarks on the Foundation's support for Armenian students. The exhibition of Saroyan's graphic works, comprising more than 100 canvases and self-portraits drawn from the writer's archive, was presented at Armenia's Museum of Literature and Art and remained on view through January 2026.

Visual Art

In addition to his literary work, Saroyan was a prolific visual artist who produced hundreds of drawings and watercolor paintings over the course of his life. The Foundation manages and exhibits this body of work as part of its cultural preservation mission.

As part of SaroyanDays 2025, the Foundation presented an exhibition of more than 100 of Saroyan's graphic works and self-portraits at the Yeghishe Charents Museum of Literature and Art in Yerevan — the largest public display of his visual art in over twenty years. The works spanned two periods of the writer's life: the 1930s, and the 1960s through the early 1980s, and included pieces created in Fresno, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. The exhibition remained on view through January 2026.

Publications

The Foundation has curated and published previously inaccessible Saroyan writings in Armenian translation. The first volume, Twenty-Two Unpublished Short Stories, was compiled by Foundation President Scott Setrakian and published in Armenian by Antares Press in September 2025. Its launch, co-hosted by the Yerevan International Book Festival, Stanford University, the Ministry of Culture, and the Foundation, took place at the National Gallery of Armenia during SaroyanDays. A second volume, collecting previously uncollected works, is scheduled for release in September 2026.

Philanthropy

Beyond its archival and literary programs, the Foundation supports charitable initiatives in the United States and Armenia. The Foundation worked in partnership with the American University of rmenia to establish the William Saroyan Scholarship Fund at AUA, supporting Armenian students pursuing higher education. AUA's first Saroyan scholarship recipient Nune Marukyan spoke at the SaroyanDays festival about how the award enabled her to remain in Armenia for her studies and launch her own enterprise.

The Foundation also partners annually with the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF). As part of SaroyanDays 2025, the Foundation and COAF co-organized a children's art competition in which 168 students aged 10 to 15 from five Armenian regions submitted artwork inspired by Saroyan's short stories. Fifteen winning works were exhibited at the closing reception of the international exhibition Saroyanian Colors: Beyond Words at the Yeghishe Charents Museum of Literature and Art.

Leadership

The Foundation is governed by a Board of Trustees. As of 2025, its leadership includes Haig Mardikian (Chairman) and Scott Setrakian (President).

Legacy

William Saroyan's work received numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Time of Your Life (1940), an Academy Award for Best Original Story for The Human Comedy (1943), and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. His standing among literary peers was reflected in the memorial tribute written by Kurt Vonnegut and read by John Updike at the American Academy of Arts and Letters — of which all three were members — on November 10, 1982. Vonnegut described Saroyan as one of only two writers of his generation capable of working in both plays and fiction with equal facility, comparing him in that respect to Somerset Maugham, and predicted that he would remain "a famous and beloved man a century from now" on the strength of his plays alone. Vonnegut characterized him as "this kind and brilliant and amusing man," and suggested that Saroyan's unflagging love of life in his work was in part a response to the Armenian Genocide — reading the white horse episode in My Name Is Aram as a story of life overcoming death.

Through its archival, literary, and cultural programs, the Foundation continues to support Saroyan's vision of artistic independence and humanistic storytelling.

See Also

• William Saroyan
• Stanford University Libraries
• Armenian-American literature
• The Time of Your Life
• My Name Is Aram

External Links

• Official website
• William Saroyan Archive at Stanford University
• William Saroyan International Prize for Writing — Stanford University Libraries