NATIONAL BESTSELLER NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION SCIENCE + LITERATURE SELECTED TITLE VANITY FAIR BEST BOOKS OF 2025 * TIME 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2025 * SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING
A thrilling book about the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.
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“Forest Euphoria reveals how science can serve as a refuge, a truth, and a means of survival. Mycologist Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian chronicles for readers the ways that fungi, forests, and fieldwork turned out to be her partners in healing from trauma and in navigating the nuances of race and gender in a world insisting on binaries. This is a remarkable, urgently needed book—one which offers readers curiosity, comfort, and belonging.”—Judges’ Citation, National Book Foundation Science + Literature Program
“A full-throated celebration of the diversity of the natural world that encourages readers, regardless of how they may identify, to reconsider their place in it . . . Blending her own personal history growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley with insightful science writing, [Kaishian] takes a deep dive into some of nature’s overlooked yet rather ubiquitous non-heteronormative wonders.”—Time, “The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025”
“Forest Euphoria pulses with vitality, in the wondrous beings we encounter and Kaishian’s vivid storytelling. I’m in awe of her ability to interweave the little-known lives of slugs and fungi with memoir and social movements, so that every page broadens one’s vision. Her expansive view of life provides an antidote to the loneliness of our species.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass
“A fascinating book that celebrates difference in unexpected ways . . . Kaishian makes a powerful case for trying to understand nature without the artificial binaries and hierarchies of human societies.”—The Washington Post
“A gorgeous celebration of the fact that, when you give your heart to Science, it rewards you with a glimpse of something profound and beautiful.”—Hope Jahren, New York Times bestselling author of Lab Girl
“If nothing has compared to reading Braiding Sweetgrass or if you’re looking for something to broaden your understanding of and deepen your love for the world, this is the book you’ve been waiting for. It’s a perfect book for our fractured, difficult times.”—USA Today
“Just as nature resists easy categorization, so does this gem of a book. It is a heartfelt memoir. It is a lyrical feat of science writing. Perhaps above all else, it is a love letter to the messy, wondrous, complicated, binary-defying nature of the natural world—and, within it, us. I loved it.”—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
“If the first lesson in how to love nature is learning to see yourself in it—and to see it in you—then Forest Euphoria is a master class in how to love the world.”—Margaret Renkl, New York Times bestselling author of The Comfort of Crows
“Forest Euphoria issues a joyous invitation to live with curiosity and love, and what could be a greater gift? I felt this invitation in the book’s scientific rigor; in its attention to the sophisticated affinity of all life; in its exacting work to orient a reader to the symmetries, puzzlements, and delights of our world.”—Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning
“An instant, exuberant classic . . . Let it open you up to new sensations, desires, and expectations of life itself.”—Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches
“An exaltation of the nonhuman creatures whose stories might yet teach us how to radically revise our understanding of being and coexistence on this planet. . . . This book thrilled me to the bone. I will never forget it.”—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water
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Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.
In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungal species, we learn, commonly encompass more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.
Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprises, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world.
PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN: 9781954118904
Price: $28.00
On-sale date: 5/27/2025
PATRICIA ONONIWU KAISHIAN is the curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. She earned her PhD from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She lives in the Hudson Valley.