Orion Magazine’s Summer 2025 Issue Launch
Join Orion’s deputy editor Tara Rae Miner with Erica Berry, Oregon Book Award–winning author of Wolfish; Julie Beeler, artist and author of The Mushroom Color Atlas; and Elan Hangens, mushroom forager, educator, and owner of Temptress Truffles. We’ll host a short panel about Orion‘s summer issue featuring writing on all things fungi, paint with mushroom pigment, needle felt using mushroom-dyed wool, and leave time for questions and audience participation.
About Orion’s Summer 2025 issue:
When humans look at mushrooms, we’re apt to see solutions—a cure, a trip, a metaphor, an answer to a problem that we probably created in the first place. In this issue of Orion, we seek to let the mushroom be, simply, itself; a marvel of mystery and interconnectedness that structures our world in ways we still don’t fully understand. This celebration of the fungal kingdom asks not what we should do with mushrooms, but how we can live alongside them.
Julie Beeler
Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist, and educator inspired by the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others. Julie created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to celebrate the resplendent chromatic universe hidden within the fungi kingdom. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. Julie founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art. She can be found online at juliebeeler.com and on Instagram at @unidola.
Erica Berry
Pronouns: she/her
Elan Hagens
Elan Hagens is a native Oregonian with a lifelong passion for the outdoors, art, and our four-legged friends. Her passion for the outdoors has led her to a professional career in outdoor education, wild foraging, and creations inspired by nature. She has spent the past two decades immersed in fiber and textile arts. A career in mycology has given her the opportunity to incorporate foraged dyes and materials into her works of art. She shares about her practice on Instagram @temptresstruffles.
Tara Rae Miner
Tara Rae Miner is the deputy editor of Orion magazine and has over twenty-five years of experience in the literary field. Writing she edited has been noted in Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing, nominated for the Oregon Book Award, and won a Pushcart Prize. She has served as a judge for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the National Magazine Awards. Tara has written for High Country News and Oregon Humanities among other places and holds a Masters degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana. She lives and works in Portland with her family.
