FORAGING & PRESERVING

11:15 am - 12:15 pm
| Location of Session: Launch SA Center
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 12:30 PM
| Signing Location: Adult Signing Tent

My Schedule

About the Event

The “Internet’s Mushroom Auntie,” Gabrielle Cerberville, creates a stunning, illustrated guide in Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life. An adventure story awakening us to the beauty of the seasons and the world we live in, this is an introduction to carefully identifying, harvesting, and processing wild food for use in our kitchens. Mary Bryant Shrader, the creator of Mary’s Nest, a YouTube channel with more than one million subscribers, teaches canning, preserving, pickling, and drying in The Modern Pioneer Pantry: A Complete Guide to Preserving Food. This session will be informative and think deeply about feeding both the body and soul and learning about the world around us to better prepare for the future.

About the Authors

Photo Credit: Zac Clark

Gabrielle Cerberville

Gabrielle Cerberville (a.k.a. Chaotic Forager, the internet’s “Mushroom Auntie”) is a nationally recognized foraging educator, community mycologist, and climate advocate based in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Her fast-paced, high-energy educational content has earned her an audience of nearly two million followers, and she regularly appears at festivals, universities, and community events across the country to lead keynotes, workshops, and immersive foraging experiences.

Gabrielle is currently completing her PhD in Music Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia, where her work bridges art, ecology, and science to investigate how humans can better understand, protect, and communicate with the living world around us.

Gabrielle is joining the Book Festival to discuss Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life.

Photo Credit: Penguin Random House

Mary Bryant Shrader

Mary Bryant Shrader, a self-described former New York City girl, discovered the simple life with her husband in the Texas Hill Country, where she embraced the role of a modern pioneer in the kitchen. Her mission is to teach others how to prepare traditional, nutrient-dense meals using time-honored skills such as fermenting, canning, drying, making bone broth, baking sourdough bread, culturing dairy, rendering animal fats, and soaking and sprouting grains. As a YouTube creator and educator, she shares these skills with a wide audience through her Mary’s Nest channel and website, where she has grown to more than one million subscribers and over 72 million video views. In addition to her teaching, she is the bestselling author of two cookbooks, including The Modern Pioneer Pantry, which continues her dedication to preserving and passing on the art of traditional cooking.

Moderator

Wendy Atwell

Wendy Weil Atwell writes about art and life in San Antonio, Texas. Her writing may be found in Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Funny Pearls, Art Lies, GlassTire, and …might be good. In her memoir, A Güera’s Guide to Ranch Life: Lessons My Father Didn’t Teach Me, she returns to her family’s South Texas ranch to conduct a scavenger hunt across the centuries, uncovering hidden truths and awakening the magic of this seemingly barren land.