Banned Books Week Event at New Non-Profit in Decatur

Banned Books Week Event at New Non-Profit in Decatur

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (August 25, 2025) – Celebrate the freedom to read with an inspiring panel of writers who teach and mentor across generations as they share personal insights into censorship and storytelling. Panelists will explore the impact of censorship on classrooms, communities, and creativity. Everyone is welcome in this timely conversation about the power of stories to shape our identity and advocacy.

WHEN: 6:30pm, Friday October 10th
WHERE: The Seed to Star Collective, 178 Laredo Dr, Decatur, GA 30030
WHAT: Panel of 4 diverse writer-educators exploring censorship, followed by book sales and signing. All proceeds from $15 ticket donated to Seed to Star’s non-profit arm, The Rock Garden.

TICKETING LINK: paypal.com/donate

Non-Profit Description

The Rock Garden is a community-grown space for healing, connection, and support. We’re building a nonprofit homebase where folks can rest, learn, share resources, and grow together. We do this by providing the physical space for accessible services, education, and community gatherings. This is care by the people, for the people. We strongly believe that community is the foundation to a strong, vibrant, and supported collective. The RockGarden is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) organization.

Panel of Writers & Educators

ANJALI ENJETI is a former attorney, organizer, and journalist based near Atlanta. She is the author of Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, The Parted Earth, and Ballot, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing in February 2026. Her other writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, Oxford American, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia.

Anjali is the recipient of the 2022 Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel, a gold medal for Best Regional Nonfiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and is a finalist for the 2023 Townsend Prize for Fiction. She has also received awards from the South Asian Journalists Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, she was named to Good Morning America’s 2021 Asian American and Pacific Islander Inspiration List. She is a graduate of Duke University, Washington University School of Law, and the MFA program in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte.

ABBY NORMAN has always loved words. She met her husband on their college speech team, and they have been talking ever since. Abby graduated from Ball State University in 2007, and worked as a high school English teacher in the state of Georgia for a decade. She went on to get a Masters in Divinity at Emory University and pastor small churches. Abby has since returned to the classroom as the middle school English teacher at The Oakhouse School, a micro-school in Atlanta designed for kids who have a hard time in public school. She also serves as a children’s pastor at Eastside United Methodist church where she teaches kids just how much God loves them. Both jobs come with snack time, which Abby appreciates.

When not working Abby enjoys spending time with her two kids and her husband, reading anything her students recommend to her, and writing on the internet on Substack and AbbyNorman.net. She has a group chat that she believes saves her life at least twice a week, and is often teased for how loud she laughs. The laughing continues to get louder with age.

LAMA ROD OWENS is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. Author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, his teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. Highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself.

A leading voice in a new generation of Buddhist teachers, Lama Rod is highly respected among his peers and the communities that he serves. Applauded for his mastery in balancing weighty topics with a sense of lightness while still speaking truth to power, this Queen has been featured by CNN, Good Morning America, BBC, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, PBS, NPR, Ebony, GQ, Out Magazine, and more. Prior engagements from the Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor and authorized Lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism include talks, retreats, and workshops for organizations, businesses and universities, including Calm, NYU, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Google, Columbia University, and Stanford University.

MEGAN VOLPERT is author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. Her newest work is Why Alanis Morissette Matters (University of Texas Press, 2025) and she won Georgia Author of the Year for Boss Broad (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). Her purpose is to give good guidance. She creates sacred spaces where charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent can thrive. Whether on the page or the stage, from home or from an office, she is an award-winning interdisciplinary thinker whose interrogations of popular culture have served millions of ideas to thousands of interested parties for over twenty years.

In addition to her integrative medicine practice, Volpert’s other gigs include: Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University, Core Faculty in the MFA Writing program at Reinhardt University, and Fellow at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. She writes for PopMatters and Salon, and has edited anthologies of philosophical essays on the music of Tom Petty and the television series RuPaul’s Drag Race.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Laura Greiner, owner
Seed to Star Collective
laura@seedtostar.com

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