FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
First-of-its-kind Field Guide to LA’s Mushrooms
Reveals Our Own Queer Connections
Exploring the Mycoverse founder Aaron Tupac takes readers on a passionate
and personal trip through the mushrooms of Los Angeles and beyond, in this genderqueer and ecologically entangled new book.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Ninety percent of the fungal kingdom is undescribed or unknown to science. However, unlike the mysteries of the ocean floor or outer space, fungi live among us: they grow in our parks and communicate across vast brain-like networks that encompass all sorts of creatures, living and dead. When pioneering conservation mycologist and educator Aaron Tupac set out to learn about the mushrooms of the city they call home, they realized that there were virtually no books dedicated to the subject. Far from the rural enclaves usually spotlighted by mushroom guides, Los Angeles boasts a diverse array of fungi—for those who know how to look.
In Meeting the Mushrooms of Los Angeles: Curiosity, Queerness, and How to Love a Fungus, Tupac offers the City of Angels its first comprehensive guide to its fungal neighbors: how to find them and, critically, how to live with them. More than just a hungry forager’s companion, Meeting the Mushrooms of Los Angeles blends practical tips for identification and conservation with an passionate argument that mushrooms have a lot to teach us about queerness, community, and what it means to be alive. Fungi can have many thousands of sexes, reproduce both sexually and asexually, and can often change their biological makeup in order to meet the needs of their environment. Drawing on their own nonbinary identity, Tupac describes a mycelial vision of ecology in the city, placing all living things in an interdependent web: uncategorizable, resilient, and ever-changing.
Featuring original artwork and several new species of mushrooms never before found in guides, Meeting the Mushrooms of Los Angeles profiles over a hundred species of mushrooms, diving into their smell, taste, habitat and more. In Tupac’s guide, readers will learn not only how to meet their fungal neighbors, but why doing so matters, and what we can learn from the vast and mysterious world humming right beneath our feet.
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Aaron Tupac (they/them) is a fungal conservation researcher, educator, community organizer, and speaker based in Los Angeles. Aaron is the founder and organizer of the fungi-focused community education group Exploring the Mycoverse at Arlington Garden. Aaron works for the Fungal Diversity Survey, the only nonprofit focused on North America’s fungal biodiversity and conservation. They serve as a fungi collector for the California Fungal Diversity Survey Project, the first government-funded state-wide project of its kind. They are also the founder and serve as the chair of the North American Mycological Association’s Conservation and Stewardship Committee. As a lover of the more-than-human world, they are fascinated with how fungi can teach us about mindfulness, interconnection, and relationships.
