Plants as Promise is a reading and conversation between authors Jennifer Kabat and Jessica J. Lee, as part of the In the Weeds series at Callie’s in Fall/Winter 2025.

Writing at the intersections of history, scientific research, and memoir, Kabat and Lee will each read from their work, followed by a conversation on genre, authorship, and the radical narratives that may emerge when humans are de-centered and the languages of plants take the foreground.

Thinking with and through plants, the authors will consider how their work relates to traditions of science writing and memoir. Historically, science writing has often aspired to be objective and distanced and has been dominated by male perspectives, while the subjective tone of the memoir, often bound to pain or trauma, is ascribed to the female voice. Challenging these formulas, the two authors lean into both genres, folding in poetry and shifts of perspective to reorient attention towards botanical life.

Humanity has learned from plants for longer than we have ignored them – millennia of knowledge often marginalized by the frameworks of Western science. Kabat and Lee advocate for connecting with this deeper lineage of plant knowledge. By translating chemical and electrical signaling into human terms, new possibilities for knowledge, care, survival, and collaboration can be revealed.

Hopscotch Reading Room, a bookstore in Schöneberg dedicated to non-Western and decolonial discourses, will be on-site with copies of each author’s books available for purchase.