A crowd of roughly 50 trickled into the patio of the Lynx Bookstore Friday evening, looking both mellow and eager, to kick off the third annual Gainesville Reads Festival, a citywide, monthlong reading celebration intended to inspire public dialogue.
This year, the month’s festivities will center on the 2024 Robin Wall Kimmerer release “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” a book highlighting the environmental scarcity dilemma and generosity-based solutions.
The festival, hosted by the Lynx Bookstore, will culminate with a keynote speech by Kimmerer Oct. 25 at the University of Florida’s Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Throughout the month, events with community partners, including the Alachua Conservation Trust, willaim to encourage audiences to read and engage with the book as well as one another.
Lauren Groff, the bookstore’s founder, said in her opening speech the festival’s original goal was to unite Gainesville residents to read about a topic with an “urgent appeal” to daily life. Now is a “deeply fraught” time, and the only way to move through it is alongside the strong, smart and nimble community Gainesville Reads hopes to build, Groff added.
“We could deepen the intellectual life of this town and move the needle toward greater justice,” she said.
Groff said she hopes the community will attend the month’s events to support the local Native population. Activities will be paused on Oct. 12 to observe Indigenous People’s Day.
“Allyship means more than merely acknowledging these people and their forced removal from this land,” she said. “It also means looking for ways to support and uplift Native voices in the community around us.”
Layered missions
Brian Ratcliff, the executive director for Kimmerer’s non-profit Plant Baby Plant, an organizationdedicated to inspiring “regenerative action to care for the Earth,” said the author’s team wants to use her book tours to prompt real action. Kimmerer’s audiences often feel inspired by her work but miss opportunities to make change once the speaking event ends, he said.
Through Plant Baby Plant’s community-centered events, such as Gainesville Reads, the nonprofit hopes to instill the author’s messages into everyday life. At the end of the festival, organizers hope participants consider Kimmerer’s question, “What does the Earth ask of us?”
“If everyone did that, if everyone felt that question alive in them, and then felt empowered and invited to answer it in community with each other, I think the world would look a lot different than it does,” he said. “And that's really the movement we're trying to seed.”
The Plant Baby Plant team said it sees a successful festival as one that would leave people with richer connections with one another and with the Lynx.
“In each place we go, we're just trying to, yeah, spawn these little moments of deep connection and healing, and then hopefully they continue long after [Kimmerer] leaves,” he said.
But the group is not alone in hoping for a more joined community come the month’s end.
Ema Olmos, the conservation events coordinator for the Alachua Conservation Trust, said it felt like a no-brainer to partner with this year’s festival, since the source material is so connected to environmental wellbeing.
She said she thinks the Lynx event is effective, and the Alachua Conservation Trust will contribute by hosting readings of sections of “The Serviceberry” for the community on conservation land. On Oct. 9, for example, the trust willlead a Prairie Creek Preserve guided hike to discuss ecological approaches to life and death.
The Alachua Conservation Trust book club, which began last year, read “The Serviceberry” as its inaugural book, and Olmos said the group was excited when they found out Gainesville Reads had chosen Kimmerer’s work as this year’s book selection.
“There were so many parts of the book that I felt resonate with the community as a whole, but also kind of conservation's role in the community,” she said. “It's a short read, but it's packed with so much beautiful imagery and ideas, and I found it very transformative.”
Olmos said the idea of a gift economy is important. Community and environmental reciprocity are the way she chooses to live her life, she said, and she believes people who live in and love the environment should, as well.
Olmos said the Conservation Trust hopes to motivate people to get outside and conserve nature through the festival, and its goal is to do public outreach throughout the month to ensure land accessibility for all community members.
“Doing more to get people out onto our land and share in those natural resources is, like, that’s success for us,” she said.
A moving night
Friday’s crowd at the bookstore ranged from elementary-aged children to seniors, who appeared to welcome the messages shared by the Lynx and its partners.
Melissa DeSa, the seed and garden director for Working Food, a food-based nonprofit working on the festival with the Lynx, called “The Serviceberry” her bible during her opening speech, and said Working Food ultimately decided to participate because of its love for Kimmerer.
By the end of the festival, DeSa said she hopes residents recognize the potential for humans to assemble communities based on sharing gifts and learning lessons from nature.
“I honestly think those are the things that are going to save us in hard times,” she said.
After the speech introductions, attendees were split into two groups — one for painting bookmarks, using plant-based ink, and one for reading quotes from “The Serviceberry.” All appeared engaged in the crafts and conversation, including City Commissioner Bryan Eastman, who joined the event alongside his wife and daughter.
One decade-long Gainesville resident, Anna Hamilton, joined the kickoff with her husband to represent The Marjorie, an environmental storytelling nonprofit and one of the Lynx’s Gainesville Reads partners.
Gainesville is lucky to have the bookstore, she said, and she believes the month’s topic reflects Gainesville’s strong sense of community, even before reading “The Serviceberry.”
“I think one of the core messages in “The Serviceberry” is reciprocity, and Gainesville has a really good track record of being a community that looks out for each other,” she said. “This just kind of reaffirms that.”
The festival’s first of 14 events, “Literature in the Garden,” will be at UF’s Field & Fork Farm and Gardens on Oct. 5.