[Full Length] The Inner Lives of Fungi — with Sophie Strand

Written By alexa firmenich

“Civilization may not be a purely human story. It may be a fungal story and even just a yeast story.”


- Sophie Strand

 

SYNOPSIS:

Woodchucks and bald eagles. Fungal fermentation. Compost heaps. Animism. Deviant animal sex. Disability. Jesus and Dionysus. Fungi, microbes, and the divine feminine critique.

It’s never a dull conversation with the brilliant and freewheelingly articulate writer, poet and philosopher Sophie Strand. Kick back and enjoy the ride.

 

GUEST BIO:

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose.

Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published in fall 2022. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. She is currently researching her next epic, a mythopoetic exploration of ecology and queerness in the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde.

QUOTES:

  • The truth is that we can see in old mythologies, in plenty of Celtic fairytales, that it's often the smallest being that ultimately grants the biggest boon.

  • Your body is your ecosystem. You can make kin with your own disability.

  • Every morning, I summon every being that I want to know as part of my decision-making process. Indigenous beings, folkloric beings, land forms, microbes, infections, ancestors, secular saints, plants, invasive species. And I think that's the most important thing about it. By the time I enter into my public persona I know that everything I say, every decision I make, is not bounded by the fiction of individuality.

  • Fungi are relational. They live between species. They are interrogative.

  • Civilization may not be a purely human story. It may be a fungal story and even just a yeast story.

  • Compost for me is this moment where rot — where a slurry of everything, where no one's excluded, but also no one is highlighted, sprouts something new.

SHOW NOTES:

LINKS:

FUNGI RESOURCE PAGE

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[Full Length] The Inner Lives of Fungi — with Giuliana Furci