About Us

The purpose of the Whittier Public Library Foundation is to help secure and maintain the funding required for the Whittier Public Library to realize its mission. It seeks to do that through private and public fundraising, and to serve as a conduit between the Library and the changing needs of a diverse community.

About Our Foundation

Virtual Author Series

Virtual Author Series—happening five Wednesday evenings in June 2021.

For a tax-deductible $25 donation to the Whittier Public Library Foundation in support of the upcoming renovation of Central Library, you’ll receive exclusive access to a LIVE zoom talk with one of five award-winning authors!

Donate $100 to the Foundation and get access to all five LIVE zoom talks – plus a chance to win one of five autographed books by the featured authors!

Learn as the authors reveal the story behind the stories

Be inspired as they share their thoughts on their work, motivations, and experiences

Participate in a Question and Answer

Featuring:

David Ulin

David L. Ulin is the author or editor of ten previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times.

Tom Zoellner

Tom Zoellner is a New York Times bestselling author of eight nonfiction books. He teaches at Chapman University and Dartmouth College. A former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, he is the politics editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

His latest book is The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America – from the offices of struggling small-town newspapers to the adult film sets of California: Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people.

He will be talking about “Finding Beauty in Everyday America”. “America used to be a country of motion but the remaking of the economy has resulted in fewer moves than at any point in the last seventy years, and Covid has put a damper on most leisure travel. What does it mean to be stuck at home and is it possible to find variety and beauty in a place you've known for years?”

Gustavo Arellano

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor of six, wrote a column called “!Ask a Mexican!” and is the author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He currently hosts a daily news podcast “The Times: Daily news from the L.A. Times” “that will bring you the world through the eyes of the West Coast”.

Molly Knight

Molly Knight is Senior Staff writer for the Athletic. A fifth generation Angeleno, Molly developed a fanatic love of baseball and the Dodgers. At the age of seven she would rattle off baseball statistics to anyone listening. She grew to become a contributing writer for ESPN from 2008-2014 when she left to write her book The Best Team Money Can Buy: the Los Angeles Dodgers Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse. It became a bestseller within 10 days of publication and changed her life. As much as she loves baseball, she's raised a pet dog which hates baseball.

Lisa See

Lisa See is a novelist, biographer, and community leader. Her books illuminate the strong bonds between women and her deeply researched, lyrical stories about Chinese characters and cultures. Her newest book The Island of Sea Women is about free-diving women of South Korea’s Jeju Island, selected by Barnes and Noble for the March 2019 Book Club.

What's Cooking?

“Here’s a secret about Whittier: It’s ascending as a great food city.” —Javier Cabral, Los Angeles Times, 2014

Consider the ascension complete! Whittierites (and foodies who visit our town from far and wide!) know that the food scene here is second to none. That’s why the Whittier Public Library Foundation is so excited about our spring fundraising campaign—

What’s Cooking at the Library?—happening five Thursday evenings in late April through May 2021.

For a tax-deductible $25 donation to the Whittier Public Library Foundation in support of the upcoming renovation of Central Library, you’ll receive exclusive access to a video of one of five professional chefs who will serve as your tour guide for a behind-the-scenes look at their Whittier-area restaurant, then take you into in their kitchen where they’ll show you what it takes to make one of their signature dishes!

Donate $100 to the Foundation and get access to all five videos—plus a chance to win one of five $100 gift certificates to the featured restaurants!

Space is limited, so make your donation and get your ticket—and a chance to win—today!

Featuring

Chef Tony Alcazar of The Crooked Gaff making Crab Esquite
Chef Ricardo Diaz of Bizarra Capital making Spicy Deviled Shrimp at Poet Gardens
Chef Shane O’Brien and Chef Claudia Galindo with Chef David Lessin of Four Bricks
Chef Lorin Smith with Kevin Smith of The Dal Rae Restaurant making the Tableside Caesar Salad
Chef Ashley Barboza with Troy and Debbie Silva of Orchard’s BBQ and Grill making The Cardiac Burger

Beam Signing

Thank you to all who contributed to the Beam Signing! It was a huge success! We welcomed over 100 people who signed one of our five columns and heard countless stories of what the library meant to them!