Suzanne Simard and Manjula Martin at San Francisco Botanical Garden

Spend an inspiring evening with renowned forest ecologist and bestselling writer Suzanne Simard as she introduces her latest book, When the Forest Breathes. Joining her in conversation is Manjula Martin, whose memoir The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The author of Finding the Mother Tree and the scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees, Suzanne Simard offers a hopeful and urgent vision for safeguarding our forests—rooted in nature’s own enduring cycles of renewal.

In When the Forest Breathes, Simard reveals the forest as a symphony of finely honed cycles of regeneration—from mushrooms breaking down logs to dying elder trees passing their genetic knowledge to younger ones—that hold the key to protecting our forests.

Working closely with local Indigenous communities, whose models of responsible forestry have been largely dismissed, Simard examines how human interventions—particularly destruction of the overstory’s mother trees—endanger new growth and longevity. If we can honor the tools that trees have honed for sharing intergenerational wisdom, she argues, we can protect these sacred places for many years to come.

This event is presented in partnership with Green Apple Books on the Park.

Featured Authors

SUZANNE SIMARD is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, where she currently leads the Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Her work has been published widely, with more than 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, TED Experiences, and articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, NPR, CNN, and many more. She lives with her family in the mountains around Nelson, British Columbia.

MANJULA MARTIN is author of The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is coauthor of Fruit Trees for Every Garden, winner of the American Horticultural Society Book Award. Martin edited the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. She is senior editor of ZYZZYVA and was previously managing editor of Zoetrope: All Story. Her work as appeared in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She lives in California.