This April, the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature will present a special event in partnership with the National Book Foundation – an evening with mycologist Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, author of Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature. Kaishian will be in conversation with Katharine Coles, distinguished professor of English and co-director of the symposium, on Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 7:00 pm in the Aline Wilmot Skaggs Building 210 at the University of Utah. The event is free and open to the public.
Forest Euphoria was named as a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Each year the Science + Literature Selected Titles award, now in its fifth year, honors three books that contribute to deeper understandings of science and technology.
Fred Adler, professor of biology and mathematics and co-chair of the symposium, was delighted when the National Book Foundation reached out to partner with the university for this event. He sees the book as a great fit for what the symposium does, describing the central tenet of the symposium as an understanding that “science and literature are part of the same creative process – that creativity and imagination come from the same place. Great science and great art come from the same place.”
Forest Euphoria is well on its way to greatness, having received high praise from celebrated writers such as Ed Yong and Robin Wall Kimmerer and featured in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and Time on must-read book lists.
A host of the event, Coles anticipates an excellent discussion with the author who serves as the fungal curator of the New York State Museum. “I think,” she says, “she [Kaishian] is speaking, in a way, to a new generation of scientists and biologists. One of the things that’s really interesting to me about the book is the extent to which it troubles ideas about naming and taxonomy, and she ties this with a narrative about how observing the natural world has been very helpful to her in her personal life.”
Both Coles and Adler have high hopes for what audiences take with them when they leave the symposium. In recent decades, many disciplines in science have been examining their own anthropocentric lenses, and this event offers audiences a chance to peer into more nuanced dimensions of the natural world.Says Adler, “I hope people come out of it with an open-mindedness towards the way nature actually works.”
This expansive approach to nature, hedging the euphoria of the book’s title, is shared by Coles, saying, “Well, I’m hoping that people will be talking, they’ll be conversing with each other. And I’m hoping that they will be disagreeing with each other. I’m hoping that they will be moving each other from one place to another. And more than anything – I hope this gives people a doorway into wonder. I don’t think you can read Patty’s descriptions without being suffused with wonder.”