2026 Fungus Festival: Thank you to all who participated

Well now, that was quite a Fungus Festival! Thanks so much to everyone for braving the rain. NYMS Fungus Festival 2026 brought together dedicated mushroom lovers and we had an amazing lineup of presenters, workshops, art, and mushroom stands!

Fungus Festival was free and open to all. It only happened because all of you gave so much of your time, passion and energy to it.

It will be very difficult to mention and thank everyone who helped without accidentally missing a few, but we will try:

The Fungus Festival was a long process, and several people were along for the full ride. Our sincere thanks to:

Hannah Wolfe, who not only helped to bring together presenters and communicate all the needs for the dig, but also was an enormous help on the day of the festival taking care of everything. Also thank you to her boyfriend for coming out and helping in the rain.

Juli Sasaki for her amazing designs. She collaborated on the poster with Caroline Brewer, Loren Kane and created a wonderful map and schedule and patiently dealt with our endless changes.

Victoria Bruno, Lee Stark and Gay von Haubner were our amazing festival organizers who have helped to put it together.

Elan Trybuch helped with social media, the website, and presented his beautiful slime mold photos at the festival.

Edward Gutierrez helped to organize documentation and the very important insurance.

Monika Stangel, Kim-Nora Ann Moses and Zihao Wang were our brave walk leaders and they were supported by Aly Silver and Lena Wu.

Maren Fossi was not only a presenter, but also on our video recording team together with Paul Mori and J.J. Larrea.

photo: Beau Lee Gambold

Paul Sadowski, Avery Melnick, Makenna Hale, and Megan Beik held fort at the microscopy table.

Bill May patiently helps us make sure we are in good financial form.

Several of our members had booths with excellent displays and workshops: Bethany Beech and Adrienne Perry, Roman Kosoy, Roberta Trentin, and Loni Diep.

Cecilia Vicuña, Matthew Rozanoff, Aubrey Carter, Andrew Cannon, Whitney Bauck and Lauren Wilson, Maren Fossi, Elan Trybuch, Jeffrey Lependorf, Mike Jones, Carmen Moreno, Bill Wurtzel, Blacki Migliozzi, Gene Yetter, Luke Sarrantonio, L Danny Parrott, and Victoria Bayevskiy all gave amazing lectures on subjects they are researching and are passionate about. Maya Han curated an incredible film selection. 

Thanks to those who held the fort with Ethan Crenson at the ID table and talked non-stop for several hours answering questions and talking about the specimens on the table: David Hutchinson, Paul Luo, Adrienne Haeberle, Avery Melnick, Andrew Cannon, Sigrid Jakob, Winslow Winslow, Wilton Rao, and Claire Kells.

Matylda’s Food, Loni Makes, Madam Susan, 4 Wall Farm, Brother’s Original and Mr. Truffs supplied us with yummy food!

Special shout-out to all the volunteers who created the beautiful signs at our sign painting event in September!

On the day, so many of you stepped up to volunteer – we thank you all!

Thanks to our awesome set-up and breakdown crew, several of whom got there just after dawn: Lucille Paterson, Ellen Fritz, Beau Lee Gambold, J.J. Larrea, Irina Yoffe, Abhi Alwar, Fhiwa Ndou, David Hutchinson, and Monica Morais.

Our wonderful welcome and merchandise sales team valiantly managed a throng of people clamoring for T-shirts and kept great records: Evdokia Sofos, Amy Plattsmier (special thank you for staying the whole day!), Julia Pun, Wendy Castillo, Elyse Castillo, Giselle Castillo, Lisa Schonberg, Aria Nelson, Jess Suttner, Patricia Klein, Stephen Klein, Flaminia De Agostini, Sacesha Bennett.

Sarah Yu, Maryna Lansky, Jan Mun, and Beau Lee Gambold documented the festival in photos.

Amanda Alic made the merch section of the web site work so that Fungus Festival t-shirts could be sold.

Thanks to our presenters support and workshop volunteers Nancy Kricorian, Jill Nuckel, Bunny Lee, Shean Ortiz, Carmen Moreno, Vivian XS Hou, Margaret Borger, Gretchen van Matre, Paige Kloss (special thank you for delivering our T-shirts),  Kimberly Wee, Reina Mitchell, Grace Zhao, Ian Epstein, Brent Boylen, Panayiota Fertitta-Boutis, Charlie Dibe, Lisa Schonberg, Tom Klein, Rebecca Rand, Catherine Huff, and Dannie Dinh.

photo: Jan Mun

The Fungus Festival extended beyond us. We had so many wonderful partners who offered activities, presentations and resources that vastly expanded the scope of the festival and allowed everyone to appreciate fungi in completely new ways: BioBus, those who gave the Battery Farm Tour, Battery Park City authority – BPCA naturalists.

Thank you to the artists who presented their artwork: Elan Trybuch, Roberta Trentin, Irina Adam, Tomo Sone Movement, Grace Jung Sculpture, Life Art Fungi and Brooke Goldstein.

We also want to thank our mushroom and food stands: Raaka Chocolate, Golden Hour Glass Teas, The Mushroom Shop, Cove Mountain Mycology and Cam’s Urban Farm.

We are grateful for the steadfast support of The Battery, Paula Recart and Helen Schrayer not only offered the amazing location to us for free, but provided amazing support and beautiful collaboration throughout! We have been working together for many months and are so grateful for their help.

Please let me know if I’ve forgotten to mention someone and we’ll call them out in a future email!

Again, with sincere and hearty thanks,
Ethan Crenson and Anna Efanova