25th Annual
Literary Luncheon— Festival of Women Authors

Saturday, March 17, 2012,  11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Surf and Sand Resort, 1555 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach

This year our speakers will be four highly-praised featured authors: Heidi Durrow, Rachel Kushner, Maile Meloy, and Danzy Senna.

Arrive early and place your bids in the Silent Auction for a variety of exciting items donated by local merchants and members. We have a large variety of items to bid on — jewelry, dinners at local restaurants, spa sessions, Objets d’Art, and lots more. We will have books by our featured authors available to purchase and the authors will be present to sign their books. You can also purchase “Opportunity Tickets” for a chance to win gift baskets and other exciting prizes. If you have items to donate, contact Katie Slattery at 499-2574. Click here for silent auction donation form.

HEIDI W. DURROW wrote the New York Times Best Seller The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, named winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, one of the Washington Post Best Novels of 2010 and a Booklist and Bookmarks Top 10 Debut Book. Ebony Magazine recognized Heidi as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010. A graduate of Stanford, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School, Ms. Durrow is the co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat, and cofounder and coproducer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival. Visit the author's website.

 

RACHEL KUSHNER wrote the widely praised debut novel, Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. This riveting story is set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in 2000. Rachel has written widely on contemporary art, including numerous features in Artform, and her fiction and essays have appeared in many publications including the New York Times. She was an editor at Grand Street and Bomb magazines, and is at work on a second novel.  Visit the author's website.

 

MAILE MELOY wrote the story collection Half in Love, the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter. Her collection Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, and winner of the California Book Awards Silver Medal for Fiction. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications. She has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her new novel, The Apothecary, is her first for young readers. Visit the author's website.

 

DANZY SENNA wrote the national bestselling novel Caucasia, winner of the Book of the Month Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Caucasia was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and has been translated into eight languages. A recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, Ms. Senna is also the author of the novel Symptomatic, and the memoir, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History. Her latest work is a story collection, You Are Free.  Visit the author's website.

Reservations

Fill in the reservation card you received with your invitation and send it with your check, payable to AAUW-LBF, to Janette Mestre, 2240 Hillview, Laguna Beach, CA. Or download a blank form from the link below.

Tickets are $80 per person if postmarked by March 9 ($45 is tax deductible). After March 9th the price goes up to $85. Call Diane Reed 949-497-3212 to see if space is available.

Guests are welcome. Tables of 8 to 10 can be reserved for priority seating; send one check (or all checks per table) with the reservation card, and list guests' names on the back of the reservation form. (This is important for their name badges). All other tables are open seating.

> Click here to download a reservation form.

 

Driving Directions

> Click here for an interactive map to the Surf and Sand Resort

 

How you can help

Silent Auction Donation

Did you receive a Treasure that just doesn't fit in your home but is too precious to put in the giveaway pile? Consider re-gifting your unique items and treasures to our Silent Auction and Opportunity Prizes. Use the enclosed Donation Form for your donated items and/or those solicited from merchants/service persons. For more information, call Katie Slattery at 499-2574.

> Click here to download the Silent Auction Donation Form

Sponsorship

To help defray the cost of printing the Program Booklet for the Literary Luncheon, we are soliciting contributions from members and local businesses. There are three ways that you can help.

1)  Become a Member Sponsor

There are four levels of sponsorship that include tickets to the event, a personal message in the event Program Booklet, various levels of recognition and other rewards..

> Click here to download a Sponsorship form.

2) Become a Business Sponsor

For those of you who have businesses or know people in business or in an organization who might want to contribute more we have four levels of sponsorship. Business sponsors will receive various levels of recognition, including their sponsorship message in the event Program Booklet.

> Click here to download the Sponsorship Form

3) Help underwrite event costs or fund a scholarship

Through our branch nonprofit arm, the AAUW-LB Foundation,* you can fund a scholarship for a high school graduating senior girl ($500-$750) or a woman returning to college (up to $2,000), send a girl to the AAUW-CA Science Camp ($800), or support the El Morro School tutoring program ($100). Or you can underwrite all or part of the event expenses.

> Click here to download a form for Underwriting and Other Contributions

How the funds raised will be used

The American Association of University Women (AAUW), advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research.

The fundraising proceeds of the AAUW Laguna Beach Branch Literary Luncheon Festival of Women Authors are administered by the nonprofit AAUW Laguna Beach Foundation, a 501-c-3 organization, Tax ID# 33-0915388.

Beneficiaries of our fundraising have historically included women in graduate study and gender equity research and other programs through the AAUW Funds, funded middle school girls to attend a AAUW California Tech Trek Science & Math Camp, scholarships for deserving high school graduating senior girls and women returning to college, elementary school tutoring, and local community grants to nonprofit organizations that support AAUW’s mission of educational and gender equity for women and girls.

*AAUW Laguna Beach Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Tax ID 33-0915388.

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