Biologist Beronda L. Montgomery will read from her new book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy, and will be joined in conversation with University of Iowa Associate Professor Louise Seamster. Described as a “stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery [that] offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees,” When Trees Testify is praised by Publishers Weekly as “A poignant and singular retelling of Black American history,” while Kirkus Reviews says: “Botanical knowledge, Montgomery argues persuasively, was intrinsic to Black people’s survival and sustenance before and after emancipation. A fresh perspective on Black history.”

Beronda L. Montgomery is an award-winning plant biologist and the author of the acclaimed Lessons from Plants (Harvard University Press, 2021). She has been named one of the journal Cell’s 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America, and was awarded the 2021 Cynthia Westcott Science Writing Award and 2022 Adolph E. Gude, Jr. Award for outstanding service to the science of plant biology. She was named a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University (2025-26), and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Academy of Microbiology.

Louise Seamster is a sociologist whose research examines contemporary mechanisms for the reproduction of racial and economic inequality. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and the program of African American Studies at the University of Iowa. She is also a Research Fellow in the Social and Education Policy Research Program at the University of Iowa’s Public Policy Center, and a former Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.