On Saturday, October 10, the stretch of East Nine Mile that runs through downtown Ferndale will fill with authors, vendors, and readers for the Banned Together Book Fest, a day-long celebration of banned and challenged books that its organizers describe as a book fest for all voices. The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., spread across four addresses in the walkable heart of the city, and it is timed to close out Banned Books Week, the annual national observance that draws attention to censorship and the freedom to read.
The event is the work of two local booksellers, Alex and Erin, who have built it around a simple premise: that a good read can open and broaden minds, and that the stories most frequently excluded, ignored, or silenced deserve amplification rather than removal. In their own words, the festival exists to fight the systems working to ban and censor voices while bringing the book community together. Beyond banned books, they write, the goal is to promote the diversity of storytelling and the joy of expanding one's views.
That mission is written into the festival's geography. Rather than a single fixed-seat venue, Banned Together spreads across downtown Ferndale, with vendors and authors at 215 West Nine Mile and 261 East Nine Mile, panel discussions at 222 East Nine Mile, and the official bookseller at 251 East Nine Mile. Those addresses are not incidental. The 222 East Nine Mile location is the Ferndale Area District Library, and the official bookseller is Love & Other Books, the indie romance bookshop that opened at 251 East Nine Mile in August 2024. The festival's safety and accessibility page names the three core spaces outright: the Ferndale Library, Love & Other Books Bookshop, and Go Comedy! Improv Theater, the improv venue that shares the downtown strip.
Organizers have been candid about why safety planning is part of the event's public materials. Their page states plainly that safety is the top priority for everyone involved, from authors and vendors to volunteers and festival goers, and notes that the festival sits conveniently across the street from the Ferndale Police Station, which they describe as a community safety partner that will be informed of all festival happenings on the day of the event. Library staff, they add, are trained for emergency situations. The festival also publishes a code of conduct with a zero-tolerance policy for harassment, listing stalking, intimidation, offensive verbal comments, threats, hate symbols, and bathroom policing among the prohibited behaviors, and affirming that Ferndale is a progressive and LGBTQ+ friendly community that celebrates diversity.
The programming reflects that ethos. The festival's author lineup includes Kenya Moss-Dyme, a poet and writer whose event listing invites readers to gather and honor the boundless power of storytelling; the poet known as A Poet in Flames; Supriya Kelkar; Frederick L. Smith; Blake Gabrielle; Eric Rosswood; Lisa Peers; Bethany Tap; Sarah Goehrke; Maude Winters; Steven Piziks; and Donny L. B. Vendors include Fables and Tales Co., Delicate Type, Morally, Honeydew Homestead MI, and Stay Gentle Goods, among others. The Michigan Right to Read organization is also listed among the participants. Panels, signings, and shopping local bookish vendors fill out the day, and the festival has put out an open call for volunteers, nicknamed Banned-Aids, to help with everything from author panels to making sure every reader feels welcome.
Banned Books Week itself has been observed nationally for more than four decades, and the 2026 edition arrives amid a sustained wave of book challenges and removals in school and public libraries across the country. A documentary also titled Banned Together, following three students as they fight to reinstate 97 books suddenly pulled from their school libraries, is being released in conjunction with the week, underscoring how much of the current debate centers on young readers and the shelves they can reach. Against that backdrop, a downtown street festival is a deliberate choice of form as well as content: instead of a lecture, a stroll between a library, a bookstore, an improv theater, and a row of vendor tables.
Tickets are sold online through the festival's website, bannedtogetherbookfest.com, which also hosts the festival map, the full author and vendor roster, sponsorship tiers ranging from a $200 Banned Book Lover level to a $2,500-and-up Free Speech Champion level, and a Givebutter donation page. Sponsors at the higher tiers get to select one to three banned or challenged books they love, which are then displayed with a small placard reading Curated by our friends at, a detail that turns the sponsorship itself into a reading recommendation.
The festival's own framing keeps returning to the same idea, printed at the bottom of its map page and repeated across its materials: made with love in Ferndale. For a city that has long leaned into its identity as a welcoming, arts-friendly enclave just north of Detroit, a day built around the books other places have tried to remove is a fitting capstone to Banned Books Week, and an invitation that its organizers extend in three words. You belong here.