Dave Hage oversaw environmental and health reporting at the Minneapolis Star Tribune for a dozen years, editing projects that won a Pulitzer Prize and an Edward R. Murrow Award, among other honors. His previous books include No Retreat, No Surrender: Labor’s War at Hormel, and Reforming Welfare by Rewarding Work. A Minneapolis native, he lives in St. Paul with his wife.

Josephine Marcotty is an award-winning environmental journalist who has spent her life in the Midwest. She was a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she covered complex, science-based topics. Sea of Grass is a natural expansion of her reporting on the vanishing prairie and the consequences of intensive agriculture. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband.

They recently published Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie. To learn more about this book, click here.

Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the author of Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature (Spiegel & Grau). In this book, she weaves memoir, natural history, and philosophy in order to challenge our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible for life on earth.

She is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. She earned her PhD in mycology from SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry. Her scientific research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity, evolution, symbiosis, and ecology, particularly of the less studied fungal groups, such as the insect-associated parasites. She conducts biodiversity surveys around the world, seeking to better understand fungal population patterns. Patricia is a co-founder of the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, which seeks to jointly protect Armenian sovereignty and biodiversity.

She also studies philosophy of science, queer ecology, and queer theory, exploring how mycology and other scientific disciplines are situated in and informed by our sociopolitical landscape. Her work, The science underground: mycology as a queer discipline (Catalyst, 2020) bridged the relationship between queerness and mycology. Patricia is interested in leveraging her knowledge as a scientist to advance imaginative solutions to climate change and systems of oppression.

Her keynote presentation is titled, “Scientific & Theoretical Lessons from Mycology.”

To learn more about Patricia and her work, click here.