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Faculty Biographies
Maria Pinto
When she’s not in the woods (and sometimes when she is), Maria Pinto is a writer, editor, and educator. She teaches writing and consults for the literary arts nonprofit GrubStreet, where she was a Community Programs Teaching Fellow from 2021-2023. She reads fiction for Peripheries Journal and serves on the board of Hale, an outdoor education and land conservancy nonprofit. Her writing has been supported by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Mass Cultural Council, the Writers' Room of Boston, The Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Frigg, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, The Butter, and Dostoevsky Wannabe Cities: Boston, and her nonfiction in Orion Magazine, Mushroom People, Arnoldia, and Roundglass Living. Maria has spoken about foraging, food autonomy, and fungal poetry, among other topics, to Bust Magazine, NPR stations WGBH, WBUR, and WAMC, PBS’s Poetry in America, the website Public Lands, and podcasts including unladylike and Climate Cuisine. She has led workshops and given lectures for the New York Mycological Society, Central Texas Mycological Society, Wisconsin Mycological Society, Mycological Association of Washington, DC, Telluride Mushroom Festival, Boston Center for the Arts, Brown University, Berklee College of Music, and Boston Public Library. She leads regular mycological forays at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. Her book of lyric essays inspired by mushrooms, Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: A Fungal Lens on Hidden Histories and Black Survival, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press in 2025.