The Royal Palm Book Awards recently awarded Marisa Mangani, owner and president of local commercial kitchen design firm, Mise en Place Design, a gold medal award for her memoir, Mise en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef. A writing competition hosted annually by the Florida Writers Association (FWA), RPLA is a highly regarded writing competition that celebrates excellence in writing across more than 20 genre categories. Marisa Mangani’s work, Mise en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef, was an entry in the Biography and Memoir category and scored the most points from judges amongst several other prestigious and
esteemed writers. Mise en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef is the rollicking memoir of a talented chef who takes readers on her journey through the mostly men’s club of restaurant kitchens as she travels from
Hawaii to Oregon, New Orleans, Canada, Australia, and Florida. Her memoir was published in 2022 and is also a 2023 Global Book Awards gold medal winner for Women’s Biographies. Marisa Mangani, who years ago traded her chef’s hat for a kitchen design hat, says about her achievement, "It is exhilarating to have so many years of living then so many years of writing about living, to be recognized by RPLA!”