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Ina Garten (aka the Barefoot Contessa) is the author of 13 best-selling cookbooks, a beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon with millions of followers in the United States and abroad. She is the host of Be My Guest and Barefoot Contessa on Food Network and HBO Max, for which she has won five Emmy Awards and three James Beard Awards. In the fall of 2024 Ina Garten will publish her long-awaited memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens (Crown/Penguin Random House, October 2024). 

In a live moderated conversation, Ina Garten will discuss and elaborate on the themes of her memoir—from her difficult childhood to meeting her husband, Jeffrey; from her experience working a bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to her decision to respond to an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons; and from her journey from being the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to becoming an author of bestselling cookbooks and a celebrated television host. 

Ina Garten has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Her gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft ,The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, and Tom Lake. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories, 2006, and has written four books of nonfiction– Truth & Beauty , about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, What Now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays examining the theme of commitment, and These Precious Days, essays on home, family, friendship, and writing. In 2019, she published her first children’s book, Lambslide, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, followed by Escape Goat in 2020.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the American Bookseller’s Association’s Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Award. Her novel, The Dutch House , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books have been both New York Times Notable Books and New York Times bestsellers. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages.