36th Annual Telluride Mushroom Fest: What’s New

16 Aug 36th Annual Telluride Mushroom Fest: What’s New

Tickets/passes to 36th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival here.

In addition to what’s old, like top presenters in the field, talks, forays, and food events, what’s new at Telluride Institute’s 36^th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival is also exciting.

New Executive Director, Dr. Britt Bunyard:

Having had two visiting festival directors over the last two years, the amazing Rebecca Fyffe and the equally amazing Maggie Klinedinst, the festival hired none other than Dr. Britt Bunyard, editor and publisher of Fungi magazine as this year’s executive director.

A perennial attendee over the last dozen years, Britt is intimately familiar with the event and its focuses and promises to bring a whole new level of excitement and professionalism to what is already one of the oldest and most celebrated mushroom gatherings in North America.

Britt has worked as a full-time Biology professor in Ohio and Wisconsin, teaching a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses in Evolution, Microbiology, Mycology, Invertebrate Zoology, Biochemistry, and Environmental Science. The main focus of Britt’s research centered on the coevolution of macrofungi and Diptera, the true flies. He has also coauthored “Mushrooms and Macrofungi of Ohio and Midwestern States: A Resource Handbook,” published by The Ohio State University Press, and other books.

Additional scholarly achievements include publication of scientific papers in 16 different international research journals, one patent, and articles in several popular science magazines.

Britt has served as Editor-in-Chief of NAMA’s journal McIlvainea and newsletter The Mycophile. He worked as Subject Editor for the Entomological Society of America’s journal “Annals of the Entomological Society of America.”

BrittBunyard gives several invited lectures in North America and abroad each year and regularly takes part in many mycological events and forays. He has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” has reviewed of several published mushroom guide books, been a consultant for National Geographic magazine and, most recently, for an episode of a PBS NOVA television program.

Britt is married and has three children and has recently relocated to southern California from the Midwest.

“MycoEpithalamia”& Poetry Show:

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish reading from her book” Work Is Love Made Visible” at the Oklahoma Laborfest, 2011 (Photo by Dan Wilcox)

Another wrinkle for the festival will be the publication release of a new mushroom poetry anthology, “MycoEpithalamia,” co-edited by Bunyard and me, Art Goodtimes, festival founder and long-time festival poet-in-residence:

And this year, the festival will be returning to its cultural roots with a Mycolicious Poetry Show. The extravaganza takes place Friday, August 19, Elks Club (Swede-Finn Hall) starting at 8 p.m.

Oklahoma poet and writer Jeanetta Calhoun Mish will be the featured reader, with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer doing a redux of her Paonia TEDx lecture entitled Metaphor.

There will also be performances by San Miguel County Poet Laureate Elissa Dickson, former county laureate Peter Waldor, musician Bob Beer, and a few friend and I.

Gourd Circle talks:

Also planned for the fest this year are several roundtable Gourd Circle discussions on various entheogens, open to festival participants.

Flyers will be available announcing times and places.