Fwd: The 2026 Korf Foray
New River Valley Mushroom Club
From: The Korf Foray <korf...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:39 AM
Subject: The 2026 Korf Foray
To: The Korf Foray <korf...@gmail.com>
Dearest Mycological Societies, Companies and Organizations of North America:
My name is Danny Newman, and I'm a photographer and parataxonomist, primarily of Neotropical fungi. After over a decade of enjoying the benefits of North America's many mushroom clubs, their members and their events, I decided in June of 2019 that it was time to provide an important but missing patch to the continent's mycological quilt: to host the country's first ascomycete-focused foray. Two and a half years ago, after years of planning with a dedicated team, that idea came to fruition in the form of the first Richard P. Korf Memorial North American Ascomycete Foray -- or The Korf Foray, for short -- held in Highlands, North Carolina in August of 2023. The research resulting from that event has been published in the form of a continuously updated checklist in the final issue of the journal, Mycotaxon, and continues to be published on elsewhere. Since that first year, we have awarded a total of five scholarships, invited four guest lecturers, and generated over 400 fungarium-grade biodiversity records (many of which are on iNaturalist) housed in four natural history collections across three countries and two continents. By every metric, the Foray has been a resounding success, year after year, as attested to by all who have attended.
From the moment that Korf Foray participants begin arriving to long after they return home, one thing I am repeatedly asked is, "when and where will the next Korf Foray be?" We finally have an answer to that question. We have been honored with an invitation to return to the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center, located on top of Purchase Knob in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the next Korf Foray is set to take place from July 27th through August 4th of this year.
The first Korf Foray was made possible with outsized contributions from the Korf family, contributions which they would readily dedicate once again if they had the means to do so. As they regrettably do not, we have decided to reach out to a variety of mycological clubs, companies and institutions, to ask for their/your support in making this year's Korf Foray a success. To pay for the costs of the foray with individual registration payments alone would result in an admission price too high for many people, particularly students and young people, to be able to attend. The more we can defray those costs, the better we ensure that the only criterion for attending this year's Korf Foray is a serious interest in ascomycetology, not the size of a bank account.
To that end, we are soliciting grants of any dollar amount from you, the recipients of this appeal. Your contribution will not only subsidize participants' registration costs -- particularly those applying for scholarships -- but will also enable high quality nanopore MinION sequencing of fresh material, and further the ongoing development of our website, www.korfforay.org. Myself and the rest of the Korf Foray Organizing Committee take no salary or personal stipend for creating this event, in spite of each Korf Foray requiring hundreds of cumulative hours of behind the scenes planning. Our interests lie solely in making this and future Korf Forays -- and field ascomycetology as a whole -- a solvent, productive, and inspiring part of our collective mycological future.
In return for any contribution over the $100 mark, your club/company/institution will be featured as an official sponsor on The Korf Foray website and in all programming materials. You will also receive written acknowledgement in any and all future peer-reviewed publications resulting from Korf Foray collections or activities. You may, of course, also choose to remain uncredited/anonymous, if you prefer.
In addition to asking for your financial support, we also ask that you send us your ascomycete diversity-oriented members and peers, so that they might become Korf Foray participants themselves. If there are aspiring or accomplished ascomycetologists among your ranks, we aim to hand them back to you as better collectors, identifiers and educators on what is almost certainly a disproportionately underrepresented group of fungi in your region. Participation is limited, but no serious applicant will be turned away. We also welcome your recommendations for other potential funders worth contacting, who we will reach out to if we have not already done so. Lastly, if you have non-monetary ways you’d like to support us, let us know how you think you can help.
Interested parties may reply to this email, or reach out by phone at 5056709090 for more information. We look forward to hearing from you, and to receiving your vital support to whatever degree and in whatever form you choose to provide it.
