Interconnected: Humans and Plants

Understanding plants is essential to understanding ourselves and the world we inhabit. Two books offer complementary perspectives on how plants are central to culture, survival, and the creation of the world today. In Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants, author Ashia S. Ajani explores the lives and histories of plants considered nonnative or invasive as metaphors for the Black experience in America. Ajani gives readers a new understanding of maligned plants, while connecting Black ecological pasts and the path to a greener future. In How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries, author David George Haskell places flowers at the center of the story of how evolution made the world we know today—without flowers, human beings would not exist. Haskell reflects on the biodiversity of flowers, and how they have transformed the climate and fostered partnerships between organisms. These science writers will highlight the reciprocal relationship between the natural world and humanity, and discuss environmental awareness—how plant life reflects identity and resilience and acts as a key to future sustainability. 

Purchase your book from Charis Books & More. When you check-out from that link, please mention that you will need to pick your book up at the event. Books will also be for sale on-site by Charis, and a portion of your purchase will benefit the Decatur Book Festival.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served. Signing information: Signing time: 4:15 PM

Signing location: Marriott Conference Center

About the Authors

Ashia S. Ajani is a storyteller and environmental educator born and raised in Denver, CO, unceded territory of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Their work has appeared in Sierra, Orion, Callaloo Literary Journal, and Atmos Magazine, among others. Heirloom was their debut poetry collection. Their new book is Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants.

David George Haskell is a biologist acclaimed for his lyrical explorations of the living world. His books have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction: in 2012 for The Forest Unseen and in 2022 for Sounds Wild and Broken. His 2017 book, The Songs of Trees, won the John Burroughs Medal. Other literary honors include a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a two-time finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award, the National Academies’ Best Book Award, the Iris Book Award, the Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Guggenheim fellow, and adjunct professor of environmental sciences at Emory University. He was previously William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Haskell lives in Atlanta, Georgia. His new book is How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries.

About the Moderator

Marisa Mecke is an award-winning environment reporter for WABE. Prior to WABE, she reported on environment issues statewide for the USA Today network based in Savannah, and regionally for the Mountain Times in the most northwest corner of North Carolina. She’s helped sea turtles give birth, explored the smelliest room of a sewage treatment plant and got a lot of mosquito bites while exploring our communities' connections to the outdoors.