It’s pretty much been impossible over the past year or so to walk into a bookstore and not see a gorgeous peach-colored hardcover featuring a woman with a pencil stuck in her messy bun and beakers reflected in her glasses. Bonnie Garmus’ global bestseller, Lessons in Chemistry, has taken the reading public by storm, and now the author herself is coming to Fairfax, VA!

Garmus will headline the Fall for the Book festival on Wednesday, October 16th, at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, where she’ll talk about America’s favorite fictional chemist, Elizabeth Zott, and her journey from the lab to cooking-show stardom. The Washington Post declared the book a “comic novel at precisely the moment we crave one,” and the New York Times called it “irresistible, satisfying, and full of fuel. It reminds you that change takes time and always requires heat.”

The debut author, 64, said to the Seattle Times of her unlikely success, “If I could have dreamed it, I wouldn’t have dreamed it quite this big.”

Free tickets to see Garmus, who will be in conversation with NPR’s Tayla Burney, are available on Eventbrite, but they’re going fast, so grab yours now!

This event is part of Fall for the Book, a free festival that runs October 12-18 at George Mason University. Other participating authors include Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic), Keith Donohue (The Girl in the Bog), and New American Voices Award finalists Alex Espinoza, Shahnaz Habib, and Carrie Sun. View the full schedule here.