Fungi, Survival, and Black Histories: A Q&A with Maria Pinto

Black History Month is the perfect time to find your next favorite read. We spoke with Maria Pinto on her book FEARLESS, SLEEPLESS, DEATHLESS: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival. In this Q&A, Pinto reflects on how fungi became an unexpected lens for exploring Black and brown experiences in mycology, the complexities of storytelling across cultures, and the wonder—and responsibility—of living on a biodiverse planet.

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What led you to write Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless?

The perfect confluence of forces: an acquisitions editor with an interest in fungi and a fungi-obsessed fiction writer between projects.

What was your goal for the book when you started, and did it change over time? 

The goal I started with was to try to write an ode to the kingdom of life I had fallen in love with and to talk with people in the mycological community whose work I had not seen highlighted: Black and brown folks, those on the margins. I didn’t expect it to get as personal as it did, but I suppose structuring the essays as walks “through the woods” was bound to have that effect, in retrospect. 

What did you find surprising while researching/writing this book? 

I didn’t bank on how many topics would end up getting left out of the book either because I would only be able to skim their surface or because I couldn’t ask whether those involved wanted that story told—like the Basotho healers in Southern Africa who use psilocybin-containing mushrooms as medicine.  

Do you have any favorite quotes or passages from the book? 

I enjoy reading the last few paragraphs of the book out loud, mostly because I love the story told to me by POC Fungi Community’s Mario Ceballos about his first encounter with those luminous mushrooms, Panellus stipticus, and how they acted as a lantern on a wet, rainy night in the woods. 

What are some of the key takeaways or insights that readers can expect to gain from reading your book? 

We live on a magical planet whose stunning biodiversity must be protected at all costs. 

What piece of advice would you offer authors that are currently writing their first book? 

Allow yourself to write a messy first draft; you can’t edit what doesn’t exist. Leave perfectionism alone. As a concept it is unkind to the living. 

What are you working on next/now? 

I am writing my way into some longer fiction about a survivalist and maroon scholar who comes undone after a personal apocalypse.

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