The Tucson Festival of Books (TFoB) is a registered non-profit organization that made its debut in March 14-15, 2009 on the campus of The University of Arizona. The inaugural festival featured 450 authors and presenters and welcomed 50,000 regional visitors, all made possible with generous support from our sponsors and the energetic goodwill of 800 volunteers.

Fast Passes will be available on our website starting at noon on March 5 for Friends of the Festival and on March 10 for everyone. Fast Passes are limited and will go quickly for some presentations.

An Oprah Daily Best Book of Fall
A textured, sharply written memoir about coming of age in the fourth decade of one’s life and embracing one's truest self in a world that demands gender fit in neat boxes From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe, spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a handsome, successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked off every box—marriage, children (four), a white-picket fence surrounding a stately home in Connecticut, and a golden retriever named Biscuit.

Join us on November 24th at 4pm as we welcome Oliver Radclyffe, who will be reading and discussing his memoir, Frighten the Horses. Frighten the Horses has been universally praised with Ms Magazine describing it as "[a memoir] of unshakeable honesty and truth in identity… Radclyffe’s story is one of flaws and fear, vulnerabilities and triumphs; don’t miss it.”

Radclyffe is part of the new wave of transgender writers unafraid to address the complex nuances of transition, examining the places where gender identity, sexual orientation, feminist allegiance, social class, and family history overlap. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Electric Literature, The Gay & Lesbian Review, PRINT Magazine and Them. His monograph, ADULT HUMAN MALE, was published by Unbound Edition in 2023. His memoir, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES, is out now with Roxane Gay Books. He currently lives on the Connecticut coast, where he is raising his four children.

Signed copies of the book will be available after the event.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Time to be determined

Time to be determined

Oliver Radclyffe’s memoir, Frighten the Horses, is the story of a flawed, fascinating, gorgeously queer man, and introduces Radclyffe as a witty, arresting, unforgettable voice.

New York Times best-selling author and activist Roxane Gay headlines StoryFest 2024 in conversation with writer Oliver Radclyffe, whose first memoir, Frighten the Horses, publishes this fall under Gay's publishing imprint, Roxane Gay Books.

“This is not queer theory. This is my flesh and blood,” writes Oliver Radclyffe in this spirited polemic on trans identity. Presenting his careful logic with lyrical prose, Radclyffe disrupts — intentionally, pointedly, playfully — the current structure of popular debates on gender. 

With ADULT HUMAN MALE, he rejects the academic argot of theoretical constructs and, instead, recenters the trans body as fundamental to a humanist inquiry into identity. Radclyffe posits that the cis perspective — from which nearly all gender discussions begin — is anything but neutral and thus demands both interrogation and expansion so that trans identity is not viewed through a hostile lens.

Oliver will read alongside Luke Dani Blue, whose debut story collection, PRETEND IT'S MY BODY, invites the reader into a world of outlier lives made central and magical thinking made real. Surreal, darkly humorous, and always deeply felt, Pretend It's My Body is bound together by the act of searching--for a spark of recognition and a story of one's own.

1-2 pm: On Leaving and Returning: Writing the Body Home 

Familiar and safe, alien and uninhabitable, marked by the past and vulnerable to the present and future: The concept of home — whether in our bodies or in the physical spaces they inhabit — can evoke complex and seemingly competing ideas. Take a journey with these five writers as they explore the visceral connections between home, identity, and belonging. 

With Mitzy Sky, Oliver Radclyffe, Namrata Patel, Sonya Huber, and Sidek Fofana. Moderated by the Director of the Connecticut Writing Project and Associate Professor of Literacy in Educational Studies and Human Development at Fairfield University Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall.

Transgressive: Radical Approaches to Gender and Sex with Janet Hardy, Notes of an Aging Pervert & Oliver Radclyffe, Adult Human Male: Radical views on sex and gender by self-described "kinky lesbian geezer" Janet Hardy and trans man Oliver Radclyffe. Hardy shares her experiences as an aging lesbian and Radclyffe talks about normalizing trans identity.