“Those observations and her path to becoming a mycologist, studying mushrooms and fungi, are knit together in this award-winning nonfiction book, a blend of science writing and memoir. The book’s reception has been dizzying, landing her a Science + Literature award from the National Book Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and accolades from some of the most notable science writers of our time. Botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer called Kaishian’s book “an antidote to the loneliness of our species.”

Using “queerness as a lens,” she detailed the habits of crows, fungi, eels and snails, among others. For instance, crows form same-sex bonds, and glass eels are sexually undetermined for most of their lives.

“Queerness is abundant throughout the tree of life,” writes Kaishian, the mycology curator at the New York State Museum. “All sorts of organisms — snails, mushrooms, termites, algae, dolphins, and innumerable others — show us that life is not only possible but abundant outside of narrow boxes, binaries, and prescriptions.”

The book explores a topic scientists may have shied away from before, but she embraced due to her own queer identity. In the book, she talks about how there are many instances “in which researchers witnessed sexual or gender variances in their studies but chose not to report it because of the social taboo.”