City Arts and Lectures presents New York Times bestselling author Padma Lakshmi, Love, Loss, and What We Ate, Easy Exotic, Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet, in conversation with Peabody Award-winning comedian, director, and producer W. Kamau Bell, Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, $69-$105, 7:30 (https://www.cityarts.net)
Fourth Saturdays Poetry at the Claremont Library presents a reading by Nancy Lynée Woo, poet and teaching artist, and Ron Koertge, Pandora's Kitchen: Poems, award-winning poet and young adult novelist, Helen Renwick Library, 208 North Harvard Avenue, Claremont, free, 2:00 pm (www.claremontlibrary.org/monthly-poetry-readings.html)