Naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto offers a stunning debut book that uncovers strange and beautiful fungal connections between the natural and human worlds. She mingles reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers’ domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles to the possibility that enslaved people wielded mycological poisons against their enslavers.

Pinto brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal, ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join her in pursuit of beautiful, perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as she explores this understudied kingdom’s awe-inspiring diversity and discovers how fungi have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival, pleasure, revelation, and revolution.

BIO

When she’s not in the woods (and sometimes when she is), Maria Pinto is a writer, editor, and educator. She teaches writing and consults for the literary arts nonprofit GrubStreet, where she was a Community Programs Teaching Fellow. She reads fiction for Peripheries Journal and serves on the board of Hale, an outdoor education and land conservancy nonprofit. Her writing has been supported by Assets for Artists at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Mass Cultural Council, PLAYA, the Writers’ Room of Boston, The Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green.

Her fiction has appeared in Frigg, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, The Butter, and Dostoevsky Wannabe Cities: Boston, and her nonfiction in Orion Magazine, Arnoldia, Mushroom People, and Roundglass Living. Maria has spoken about foraging, food autonomy, and fungal poetry, among other topics via Bust Magazine, NPR stations WGBH, WBUR, and WAMC, PBS’s Poetry in America, the website Public Lands, and podcasts including unladylike. She has led workshops and given lectures for the North American Mycological Association, Northeast Mycological Federation, New York Mycological Society, Central Texas Mycological Society, Sonoma County Mycological Association, Wisconsin Mycological Society, Telluride Mushroom Festival, Boston Center for the Arts,  and Print Ain’t Dead, which published her zine for beginning mushroom hunters. She leads regular mycological forays at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.

REVIEWS

"This delectably provocative fungal sampling gives the reader much to savor." -- Kirkus (starred review)

"A joyful mix of memoir, science, history, and adventure...with echoes of Jamaica Kincaid and Annie Dillard." -- Publisher's Weekly

[P]  University of North Carolina Press  /  October 28, 2025

 0.8" H x 8.1" L x 5.3" W (0.6 lbs) 240 pages