After a climate disaster, a young chef’s discovery of pleasures alters her life and, indirectly, the world.

When a cloud of smog envelops the earth, killing most of the planet's food crops, a chef escapes her dying career to take a job at an "elite research community" free of the world's troubles. There the sky is clear again, and rare ingredients abound. But her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter are secretly attempting to reimagine the world. When they try to draw her into their scheme, the chef must reckon with whether she can preserve her identity on the plate and beyond.

C Pam Zhang speaks with Padma Lakshmi about dining and deliverance at the end of the world.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

C Pam Zhang is the author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and the forthcoming Land of Milk and Honey. She is the winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, a Booker Prize nominee, and a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Zhang's writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and a current New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.

Padma Lakshmi is an Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, and a New York Times best-selling author and one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People (2023).

She is the creator of the critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated Hulu series Taste the Nation, which is the recipient of a James Beard Foundation Award top prize in Visual Media–Long Form. Lakshmi served as host and executive producer for 19 seasons of Bravo's two-time Emmy-winning series Top Chef, which has been nominated for 47 Emmys, including her five-time nomination for Outstanding Host for A Reality-Competition Program.

Lakshmi is co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America (EFA) and an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Artist Ambassador for immigrants' rights and women's rights. Lakshmi was also appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

She established herself as a food expert early in her career, hosting two successful cooking shows: Padma's Passport and Planet Food, and writing the best-selling Easy Exotic, which won the Best First Book award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Lakshmi followed this with the publication of her second cookbook Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet and her memoir The New York Times best-selling Love, Loss and What We Ate. She later published The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs. In August of 2021 she published her first children's book Tomatoes for Neela, which was also a New York Times bestseller.

Additionally, Lakshmi is a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has received the 2018 Karma Award from Variety, as well as the 2016 NECO Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Just when she thought her modeling days were behind her, she graced the pages of Sports Illustrated Magazine's Swimsuit Edition in 2023.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

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C Pam Zhang © Clayton Cubitt
Padma Lakshmi © Inez & Vinoodh