Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market
Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market combines personal memoir, scholarship, and more than 200 stories, interviews, and photographs from the 32nd Street Farmers Market in Baltimore, MD, exploring the power of storytelling to build a shared sense of community and social responsibility. As Diane Doberneck from Michigan State University’s office of Outreach and Engagement writes: "Through multi-vocal ethnographic vignettes, dialogue, and photographs, we come to understand authentically human themes, including longing for places we call home, the deep connections we make through shared food traditions, and the power of story—both individually and collectively. Unsentimentally, Story Seeds reminds us of the value of Third Spaces in our increasingly disconnected lives, the need for intergenerational and cross-cultural encounters, and the seasonality of our food and of our lives."
Author Megan Lovely, M.F.A. is a Program Manager for Community-Engaged Learning at the University of Rochester, and she has presented Story Seeds at various universities in contexts ranging from qualitative research courses, ethics of community-engaged storytelling, and evaluating community-university partnerships; and presented at local and national conferences. If you’re interested in facilitating conversation about Story Seeds, contact Megan for author talks, workshops, and book clubs at: mlovely
Furthermore, a combined 15% of all copies sold is donated to the 32nd Street Farmers Market; Black Yield Institute, a Pan-African power institution working towards Black land and food sovereignty; and Farm Alliance of Baltimore, a collective of urban farms working to promote communities’ self-determination and power through connection, resource sharing, and collective advocacy. As of November 7, 2025, Story Seeds has raised more than $1,000 to support these local organizations.