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    Padma Lakshmi will host this year’s National Book Awards.

    Jessie Gaynor
    By 
    October 11, 2022, 11:50am

    Big news for the (in my experience, huge) Venn diagram center of book lovers and Top Chef fans: Padma Lakshmi will host this year’s National Book Awards. Lakshmi is the bestselling author of multiple cookbooks as well as a children’s book and a memoir, and host of Top Chef (AKA the show that comprised approximately 90% of my early pandemic viewing) and of Taste the Nation, which she also created.

    I’ve always said that the National Book Awards could benefit from adopting an elimination model as well as a catchphrase, so I’m hoping that Lakshmi can bring something as sticky as “Please pack your knives and go” to the table. Maybe “Your book did not show us what it means to be human,” or “Your tour is forced”? (Look, there’s a reason they didn’t ask me to host. Actually, there are many reasons.)

    The ceremony will be held in-person and broadcast live on November 16 at 8 PM EST.

    National Book Awards Padma Lakshmi

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