In “The Wonder of Mushrooms,” Spokane author Maya Jewell Zeller begins her opening chapter, “A Kingdom of Fungi”:
“Animalia, Plantae, Fungi,
Protista, Archaea, or
Archaebacteria, and Bacteria
or Eubacteria.
This isn’t a prayer to the divine,
though say it aloud a few times in a row
and you may feel a bit like a poet or a priest.”
Paired with this message is lush watercolor depicting a collection of five rust-colored mushrooms established in a mossy green, with a moody forest green background. Illustrated by Jenny deFouw Geuder, AdventureKEEN released this book marrying science and art, and Zeller will be at Wishing Tree Books at 6 p.m. Tuesday to talk about it.
“I have always kind of wanted to learn more about mushrooms. I do not consider myself a mycelial expert,” Zeller said. “I’ve been curious about mushrooms for a really long time.”
“My friend Liz Bradfield, the poet, calls me an aspiring generalist. She says that I’m kind of a little bit good at a lot of different things, and I’ve kind of known a bit about geology and botany, and my study discipline is poetry and poetics, but I’ve been doing memoir writing and then I just spend a lot of time outside. So I’m sort of a generalist naturalist.”
AdventureKEEN approached Zeller about writing this book, explaining that they wanted a “book of mushroom spells.”
“I had formerly written poetic spells, and kind of joked about being a spell caster,” Zeller said. “I was really speaking in the context of spells, as in the power of language and the power that we conjure when we merge imagination with intellect, right? I was more interested in that … And I said, ‘I’m not a mycologist. I don’t know that much about mycology.’ And they said, ‘Well, we really just want your language.’ ”
Through that lens, Zeller provided the publisher with some early poetry pieces about mushrooms, and AdventureKEEN clarified further that they wanted prose from Zeller, not poetry.
“I contracted a friend who’s an amateur mushroom foraging expert,” Zeller said. “I started foraging and eating wild mushrooms, photographing them more, reading more about them, reading every poem I could get my hands on that was on mushroom and mycology and mycorrhizal networks.”
The experience of writing a book on contract operates differently for Zeller than when she’s writing a book under contract, like with “The Wonder of Mushrooms.”
“The poet Mary Ruefle says that when she writes poetry, she follows like a bird into the forest. And that’s how I normally write. I normally hear a sound or see an image, and I just follow it, and I just see where it moves me into the forest of my own imagination, and that often results in a poem or a short story or an essay or whatever. But when I’m writing on contract, I am starting more from a collaborative outline.”
A mycologist reviewed the book for accuracy, which was important to Zeller. Still, she wants readers to understand the book is not meant to be a field guide, but she does have plenty of good recommendations for those looking for one.
“My hope is (‘The Wonder of Mushrooms’) is an accessible way to engage the imagination with a content area that, yes, might bring them closer to the actual Earth and might bring them closer to – in wherever they are in their communities – engaging in education and conservation efforts and hopefully using the five senses and wonder and imagination and curiosity to pursue whatever their obsessions are,” Zeller said.