The Literary Luncheon is AAUW Laguna Beach’s biggest annual fundraiser. This special event gives us a wonderful opportunity to get together with friends, colleagues, and branch members to listen to outstanding women authors while raising funds for scholarships and worthy projects that are administered by our branch’s nonprofit arm, the 501(c)(3) AAUW Laguna Beach Foundation.

The 2024 event to be held at the Dana Point Yacht Club on October 20th features these 3 talented authors:

 
Rufi Thorpe, an exceptional writer of novels that deal with contemporary issues, was scheduled as a speaker for the March 2020 luncheon. We all know what happened in 2020!  Luckily, Rufi has agreed to come to the luncheon scheduled for this coming October.  Rufi has 3 published novels and a new book coming out this June!   Margo’s Got Money Troubles, is a bold, laugh-out-loud, heartwarming story of one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world.  https://www.rufithorpe.com/ 

 
Mansi Shaw was born in Canada, raised in the midwestern U.S, and currently lives in Los Angeles.  She writes about what she knows; the collision of western and Indian cultures, the immigrant diaspora, and family connections. In her stunning debut novel, The Taste of Ginger, a family tragedy beckons a first-generation immigrant to the city of her birth, where she grapples with her family’s past and cultural differences. Mansi’s second novel, The Direction of the Wind, is an emotional story about a young Indian woman who searches in Paris for answers about a mother she barely remembers. https://www.mansikshah.com/

 
Belinda Huijuan Tang, born and raised in San Jose, California, has also lived in Beijing, and studied for two years at Peking University. In college, she thought she would be an economist. Luckily for us, she became a writer.  Released in the summer of 2022, her mesmerizing debut novel, A Map for the Missing, is set in a rapidly changing post–Cultural Revolution China. Hats off to Belinda for a first novel that Booklist calls “spectacular” and Kirkus Review terms “ambitious”. https://www.belindahuijuantang.com/

The event raises funds to support:

• • Tutoring students in an after-school program at El Morro Elementary School (TLC).
  • Scholarships for middle school girls to attend AAUW Tech Trek summer STEM camps.
  • Scholarships for college-bound girls graduating from Laguna Beach, and Estancia high schools.
  • Scholarships for women at Saddleback College, the Laguna College of Art + Design (LCAD), Orange Coast College (OCC), and UC Irvine.
  • Scholarships for women students at LCAD and OCC to attend the AAUW- sponsored National Conference of College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL).

We also support AAUW’s goal of gender equality by funding:

• • Fellowships for graduate and post-graduate study and research for American and international women.
  • Grants for public service projects and career-related study, training, and national conferences.
  • Research in educational and gender equity.
  • Support for plaintiffs in cases of sexual harassment and gender bias in academia and the workplace.

Literary Brunch 2023

Literary Brunch 2021