Advance Praise
“In Fungal, Ariel Gordon leads us on an intimate journey through diverse landscapes of mushrooms and the people who love them, from urban to wild, commercial to kitschy. Her blend of wisdom and humour enriches the experience, offering insightful reflections and emotional depth. I loved it! I got lost in new worlds and emerged all the better for it.” – Kim Anderson, author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood
“Ariel Gordon’s Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest is a perfect companion for anyone curious about not only mushrooms but the complexities of ecosystems of all kinds, natural and human-made. Every page is animated by wild energy and muddy joy. How lucky we are to have this excellent forager’s guide not only to mushrooms and their possibilities (culinary, medicinal, psychotropic) but also to big ideas, to happiness and to community.” – Theresa Kishkan, author of Blue Portugal and Other Essays
“Ariel Gordon’s Fungal is an ecstasy of attention. For over twenty years, she has pored over the urban forest, neighbourhoods, riverbanks and surrounding parklands of her Winnipeg home to celebrate the everyday, everywhere presence of beings at our feet: mushrooms. Her quirky, compelling pursuit of fungi slaps mosquitos, crams in reams of material from the library and the internet, and slogs through muddy back roads as she forages from the days of Selkirk’s treaty with Chief Peguis in 1817 to her harvesting alongside Cantonese- or Somali-speaking factory workers in 2021 and onwards to her rummaging with Ukrainian neighbours in flight from the current war with Russia in search of pidpanki honey mushrooms. Ariel Gordon treats readers to the world of wonders in a fungal spore.” – Daniel Coleman, author of Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place
“Ariel Gordon’s complex collection of essays clusters together like a living organism – a fleshy and fruitful species that captures the essence of life, inoculating readers with the succulence of what spawns from moments when we truly pay attention. Revelling in the intricacies of mushroom varieties – those glorious layers of spores – and treasures found in the muck, Gordon focuses a magnifying glass on what is hidden in our ecosystem, and what can be found if we look closely. The essays in Fungal are akin to the mushrooms Gordon is consumed by – they attach and root within, showing us how to forage our way through the shit and harvest joy. Make no mistake, Fungal will grow on you in ways you can’t imagine.” – Adrienne Gruber, author of Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood