luncheon with the authors 2024
The Society of the Arts (SOTA) proudly presents its eleventh annual fundraising event Luncheon with the Authors on October 10, 2024. The event will be held at Renaissance Hotel Allentown.
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Three nationally-acclaimed authors will share remarks, participate in a panel discussion, and sign books for attendees.
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SOTA's Luncheon with the Authors gives the public an excellent opportunity to participate in an engaging discussion by three authors about their books, meet and speak personally with them, and pose questions during the panel discussion.
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The SOTA “Luncheon With The Authors” Committee members spend months reading more than one dozen books before deciding on the three authors, basing their choices not only on the authors' storytelling abilities, but also on how they would be as a panelist in providing a lively discussion with the event attendees.
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Luncheon With The Authors benefits educational programs at the Allentown Art Museum, the SOTA Print Fund and the SOTA Education Endowment. Books purchased through SOTA also benefit the Allentown Art Museum.
New this year:
Cocktails with the Authors
Cocktails with the Authors
October 9, 2024 | 6-8PM
Allentown Art Museum
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SOTA is excited to announce our newest event, Cocktails the Authors! This exclusive happy hour is the perfect opportunity for our guests who cannot make a daytime event or simply want to mingle with our authors in casual but intimate setting. Limited to only fifty guests, Cocktails with the Authors offers one-on-one time with our featured authors, book signings, a docent-led tour at the Allentown Art Museum, small bites, and delicious drinks.
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Don't miss out on this unique opportunity!
The details
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Luncheon with the Authors 2024 will be held
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Thursday, October 10, 2024 from 11am to 2pm​.
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The event will be held at Renaissance Allentown Hotel in downtown Allentown.
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Luncheon menu:
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Herb Lemon Grilled Chicken salad served with Roasted Tomato, Sunflower Seeds, Croutons, Shaved Parmesan with at Lemon Parmesan Vinaigrette.
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(Vegan/Vegetarian Option) Roasted Tomato, Sunflower Seeds, Croutons, Shaved Parmesan, Lemon Parmesan Vinaigrette Served with Falafel
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Flourless chocolate cake
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If you need a gluten free entrée or have other dietary restrictions, please indicate that in note to seller at checkout or email sotawebmaster123@gmail.com​
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Parking at the Renaissance Allentown Hotel will be validated for guests. Please see parking information here or view parking video here.
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Cocktails with the Authors will be held Wednesday, October 9, 2024 from 6-8 PM at the Allentown Art Museum.
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No physical ticket will be delivered to purchaser. Purchaser and guest names will be at event check-in. Please visit the registration desk upon entry.
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Don't hesitate - tickets will sell out fast!
Thank you to our sponsors!
We deeply appreciate your generous support for the Luncheon with the Authors, which has made this event possible and more impactful.
Your commitment to our community is truly invaluable. Thank you for being an essential part of this memorable experience!
interested in sponsoring Luncheon with the Authors? Click here!
the authors
Shelley Noble
The Tiffany Girls
It’s 1899, and Manhattan is abuzz. Louis Comfort Tiffany, famous for his stained-glass windows, is planning a unique installation at the Paris World’s Fair, the largest in history. At their fifth-floor studio on Fourth Avenue, the artists of the Women’s Division of the Tiffany Glass Company are already working longer shifts to finish the pieces that Tiffany hopes will prove that he is the world’s finest artist in glass. Known as the “Tiffany Girls,” these women are responsible for much of the design and construction of Tiffany’s extraordinary glassworks, but none receive credit.
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Emilie Pascal, daughter of an art forger, has been shunned in Paris art circles after the unmasking of her abusive father. Wanting nothing more than a chance to start a new life, she forges a letter of recommendation in hopes of fulfilling her destiny as an artist in the one place where she will finally be free to live her own life.
Grace Griffith is the best copyist in the studio, spending her days cutting glass into floral borders for Tiffany’s religious stained-glass windows. But none of her coworkers know her secret: she is living a double life as a political cartoonist under the pseudonym of G.L. Griffith—hiding her identity as a woman.
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As manager of the women’s division, Clara Driscoll is responsible for keeping everything on schedule and within budget. But in the lead-up to the most important exhibition of her career, not only are her girls becoming increasingly difficult to wrangle, she finds herself obsessed with a new design: a dragonfly lamp that she has no idea will one day become Tiffany’s signature piece.
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Brought together by chance, driven by their desire to be artists in one of the only ways acceptable for women in their time, these “Tiffany Girls” will break the glass ceiling of their era and for working women to come.
Shelley Noble is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels of historical fiction, historical mystery and contemporary women's fiction, including The Tiffany Girls, Ask Me No Questions, and Whisper Beach.
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A former professor, professional dancer and choreographer, she now lives in New Jersey half way between the shore, where she loves visiting vintage lighthouses and carousels, and New York City, where she delights in the architecture, the theatre, and ferreting out the old stories behind the new.
Coming October 1
From New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble comes a thrilling historical novel about the inception of the Colony Club, the first women’s club of its kind, set against the dazzling backdrop of Gilded Age New York.
Amy Jo Burns
Mercury
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.
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The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known—or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.
Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland and the novel Shiner, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, NPR Best Book of the year, and “told in language as incandescent as smoldering coal,” according to The New York Times. Her latest novel, Mercury, is a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times. Amy Jo’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Elle, Good Housekeeping, and the anthology Not That Bad.
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You can find her on Instagram at @burnsamyjo.
Also by Amy jo burns
On a lush mountaintop trapped in time, two women vow to protect each other at all costs-and one young girl must defy her father to survive.
Meg Shaffer
The Wishing Game
Make a wish. . . .
Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.
But be careful what you wish for. . . .
Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.
For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermind” Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.
. . . You might just get it.
Meg Shaffer is a part-time creative writing instructor and a full-time MFA candidate in TV and Screenwriting at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. She lives in a state of uncertainty. Her debut novel The Wishing Game—a national bestseller—is available now from Ballantine. Her second novel, the fantasy The Lost Story, will be published in July 2024.
Don't miss
The lost story
​Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.
