William Saroyan Collections

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The Heritage Center holds one of the major institutional collections of materials documenting the career of Fresno-born author William Saroyan (1908-1981), consisting of approximately 3,000 items.

It features the following:

• Practically all his stand-alone publications (books, pamphlets, broadsides, and plays) in English, and some foreign languages as well;
• Appearances in anthologies and magazines;
• Letters and manuscripts, including his complete correspondence with his daughter, Lucy (1946-2003) and with Broadway columnist Leonard Lyons (1906-1976).
• Articles and books about Saroyan;
• Various Saroyan-related ephemera (clippings, play programs, promotional items, etc.); and
• Sound/Video items (records, cassettes, sheet music, videorecordings, etc.).

There is a catalogue of the Heritage Center's Saroyan holdings available for in-library use. Some of the items are also described in the Library's main catalog.

• Saroyan Chronology: The major landmarks in Saroyan's lifetime.
• Useful Saroyan References

Noteworthy Saroyan collections elsewhere:

William Saroyan Papers: His private archive and most important among Saroyan collections, now housed at the Stanford University Library. A finding aid is available at the Online Archive of California.

• Guide to the William Saroyan Papers, 1926-1981

The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

• William Saroyan Papers, 1905-1999 (additional to those at Stanford)
• Photographs from the William Saroyan Papers, circa 1910 - circa 1965

UCLA Library Special Collections

• Aram Saroyan Papers, 1965 - 1989

Henry Madden Library, at CSU Fresno

• Special Collections Research Center Collections

Other Resources:

• Armenian Museum of Fresno - Saroyan (with videos)
• Armeniapedia (William Saroyan)
• Forever Saroyan
• Saroyan (Fresno PBS Documentary)
• William Saroyan House Museum
• William Saroyan Society
• The William Saroyan Literary Foundation International
• William Saroyan Foundation
• William Saroyan, The Man and the Writer: Fresno photographer Paul Kalinian's Saroyan Web site has fascinating details about his Saroyan documentary film, his reminiscences of "shooting Saroyan," and related periodical articles.