Both personal and entertaining, Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) is the highly anticipated second book of a trilogy and shows Winnipeg author Ariel Gordon at her best: interweaving the personal with the easily-overlooked local and natural and local world around her, and passing on her contagious delight for the world at—and under—our feet.

In a diverse range of essays, Gordon showcases her background in biology, taking us deep into the fungal world, exploring mushrooms both edible and not, found and foraged, and the myriad ways in which mushrooms and trees make up our ecosystem and are in fact a reflection of the way we build our own personal communities and connections.

This collection of essays will resonate with anyone who’s ever thought, “can I eat that?” when seeing a mushroom, but also those with larger questions about our place in the natural world.

More About Ariel Gordon:

Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. Gordon’s essay “Red River Mudlark” was 2nd place winner of the 2022 Kloppenberg Hybrid Grain Contest in Grain Magazine and other work appeared recently in FreeFall, Columba Poetry, Canthius, and Canadian Notes & Queries. Gordon's fourth collection of poetry, Siteseeing: Writing nature & climate across the prairies, was written in collaboration with Saskatchewan poet Brenda Schmidt and appeared in fall 2023.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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