Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival

"Pinto has executed a singular work of Black naturalism. She's charting a different, and much-needed, path for nature writing where there is radicalism, self-love, lineage, and community in nature. The woods, she tells us, should belong to everybody. I wish I'd had this text when I was young, unmoved by other naturalists. I am glad to have it now."-- Gabriel Bump, author of The New Naturals

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.

Maria Pinto is a Boston-area writer, mycophile, and educator who was born in Jamaica and grew up in South Florida.