For cookbook author, television personality, and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich, her story begins with an upbringing in Pula, a formerly Italian city turned Yugoslavian under Tito’s communist regime. She enjoyed a childhood surrounded by love and security—despite the family’s poverty—and learned everything about Italian cooking from her beloved grandmother, Nonna Rosa.

When the communist regime began investigating the family, they fled to Trieste, Italy, where they spent two years in a refugee camp waiting for visas to enter the United States, an experience that shaped Bastianich for the rest of her life. At 12, she started a new life in New York. She began working in restaurants as a young teenager, the first step in a food career that would make her name.

Drawing on her new book, My American Dream (Knopf), Bastianich shares the vivid story of the fulfillment of that dream. Join her for a conversation with Joe Yonan, food and dining editor for the Washington Post, as she discusses her close-knit family, her professional ascent, and the dedication and passion for food that led to multiple restaurants, many best-selling cookbooks, and 20 years on public television as the host of her own cooking show.

The ticket price includes a copy of My American Dream.