Talking with the Prose

The literati and the glitterati were out in force when the CALM – Child Abuse Listening Mediation – Auxiliary hosted its 33rd annual celebrity authors lunch at the Hilton.

More than 450 guests attended the fancy fête, chaired for the eighth and final year by dynamic duo Carolyn Gillio and Becky Cohn, which raised around $100,000 for the popular charity which prevents, assesses, and treats child abuse and family violence with 9,000 children served in Santa Barbara County in the last year, 1,700 of them in CALM offices.

Three best-selling authors, including historian and filmmaker Mindy Johnson, whose latest book is Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation; Kate Quinn, who has written four novels in the Empress of Rome saga and two works in the Italian Renaissance; and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Luis Alberto Urrea, who has written 16 books, his latest being The House of Broken Angels, named one of the best books of last year by PBS and NPR, were interviewed by Emmy Award-winning Entertainment Tonight veteran Tom Weitzel and TV writer and novelist Dianne Dixon at the bustling bibliophile bash emceed for the ninth year by the ubiquitous Andrew Firestone.

Other authors at the event included Jane De Hart, Sheila Aron, Julia Bricklin, Jeff Doubet, Jo Giese, Elizabeth Gould, Roxy Greenwald, Rich Grimes, Jo Haldeman, and Catharine Riggs.

The Claire Miles Award, named after the nurse who founded CALM in 1969, went to Martha Rogers, a member of the auxiliary since 2005.

Among the many supporters were Jean Schuyler, Bridget Foreman, Alana Walczak, Beverley Jackson, Maryan Schall, Joan Rutkowski, Carrie Bissell, Connie Burnes, Roberta Collier, Sharon Curry, and Mahri Kerley.