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 2023 event features three talented authors:

Jennifer Coburn is the author of Cradles of the Reich, an historical novel about the top-secret Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race in Germany at the start of WWII. It is the story of three German women who change the course of one another’s lives. She has also published a mother-daughter travel memoir, We’ll Always Have Paris, and six contemporary women’s novels.

 

Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels and a short story collection. Her novel Great Circle was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.  An American novelist, short story author, essayist, and travel writer, she is the author of Seating Arrangements, Astonish Me, Great Circle, and the short story collection You Have a Friend in 10A. 

 

Dori Jones Yang has written a wide variety of books, including historical fiction, business, inspiration, oral histories, and children’s books. Her aim is to build bridges between different generations and cultures as her books explore different countries, explain complex issues in understandable language, and make history come alive.  Her books include Voices of the Second Wave, When the Red Gates Opened, and Pour Your Heart Into It.

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, Dana Hills 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

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