Literary Women, The Long Beach Festival of Authors

Literary Women's Festival of Authors has served the Long Beach community since 1982 by providing a world class event that empowers female authors, both established and emerging, with a platform to share their stories, sell their work, and engage with other female authors. The Festival of Women Authors was created when two women, Harriet Williams and Virginia Laddey, were appalled to discover the scarcity of women authors represented in the reading lists of local high schools. They decided to alter the imbalance by creating a festival showcasing women authors. With a committee of 25 volunteer women from over fifteen other community groups, they designed a festival that brought the best of contemporary women writers to an eager audience.

Our Emerging Writers program is one that we are especially proud of and we work with 6 young women and their mentors from local Long Beach-area colleges to amplify their work by promoting them on social media, inviting them to our festival, and introducing them to the authors during the festival weekend. This program allows the Literary Women Committee to focus on our mission to support and encourage new writers of talent and promise by selecting individuals from CSULB, Long Beach City College, Chapman University and PEN America Los Angeles to attend the Festival of Women Authors. It is our hope that these Emerging Writers will be encouraged to pursue literary aspirations as envisioned by our Festival founders. In addition, Literary Women supports our community of readers by donating funds to the Long Beach Public Library to purchase books that will be featured at the upcoming Festival. This is so that everyone has a chance to 'get caught up' before the festival day, regardless of whether they could purchase the books.

Our committee believes in the continuing need to provide the Long Beach community with a cultural forum which reflects its diversity of literary interests. As succeeding generations of women continue to support the event, it is apparent the intentions of the original committee were well-founded and continue to be relevant today.

Testimonials

Best one yet. The selection of authors was wonderful. All the speakers were excellent, and the new sound system was a big improvement! - Anonymous 2024 survey respondent

Thank you! This was such a unique and amazing day. I’m really looking forward to next year! Thank you for having the main presenters on the two large screens. I felt that was a huge improvement and helped the audience see and hear the speakers. - Anonymous 2024 survey respondent

It's my favorite event of the year! Thank you for all that you do to curate this very special and memorable event! - Anonymous 2023 survey respondent

I love this event. It is amazing. Every author is incredible, some speakers better than others but they are all great. This event introduces me to authors I am not familiar with. The event feels like a community and is so welcoming. The food was really good too! - Anonymous 2022 survey respondent