Join the Massachusetts Chapter of the Society of Women Environmental Professionals (SWEP-MA) and our host, College of the Holy Cross, for an evening with author and toxicologist Emily Monosson. A light dinner will be available.

Blight: fungi and the coming pandemic, a reading and some conversation

Meet with other environmental professionals and College of the Holy Cross students for this reading and dinner, with time for discussion and networking.

Time: 6 PM – Registration opens

6-6:45 PM – Dinner and networking

6:45-8 PM – Presentation & Discussion

About our speaker: Trained as an environmental toxicologist, Emily Monosson has been writing about science and about our impact on the environment and the consequences for wildlife and agricultural plants and us, for over a decade. One of her first edited books, Motherhood the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out gave voice to women scientists at all stages in their career facing the problems of working in traditional scientific institutions as parents and their creative and unique solutions for maintaining a meaningful life in science. A series of books that explored the evolution of life’s chemical defense responses followed. From Evolution in a Toxic World to Unnatural Selection and Natural Defense her books focus on how the chemicals we use to manage many pests and pathogens are instead pushing many of them to evolve and how we might reduce these selective pressures. Her most recent book, Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic has been called sobering, unsettling and “a short, crisp introduction to the possibility of being devoured by fungi.” She is a fan of HBO’s Last of Us, though does not live in fear of becoming a fungal zombie.