Salman Rushdie to headline Tucson Festival of Books

Other famous bylines include longtime All My Children soap-opera star Susan Lucci, Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, and author-columnist-social media magnet Susan Orlean.

“Our people have done it again,” festival director Abra McAndrew said. “From debut authors to writers known all over the world, from science writers to poets, I think there will be something for all readers to get excited about.”

She might have added “Again,” because Tucson has become a popular gathering place for leading authors in the spring.

Scheduled for March 14-15 at the University of Arizona, TFOB 17 will include more than 300 sessions on 32 stages over the two-day weekend.

The author list that is now on the festival website, tucsonfestivalofbooks.org, and it features three men making their first visits to Tucson.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie won the 1981 Booker Prize with his second book, “Midnight’s Children,” and he has lived on bestseller lists ever since.

Rushdie was raised in India as a Muslim, but later — after publishing “Satanic Verses” in 1988 — he became the target of Muslim extremists. Rushdie lived under police protection for years, and in 2022, he was attacked onstage by a knife-wielding assailant in New York.

Now 78, Rushdie will be in Tucson to discuss his recent collection of stories called “The Eleventh Hour.”

Larson began his career as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, Pa., and his investigative skills would serve him well as an author. Larson has become America’s best-known creator of historic fiction. “The Devil in the White City” centered around the 1983 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago. “The Splendid and the Vile” focused on Winston Churchill during World War II.

His latest study, “The Demon of Unrest,” takes us to Fort Sumter in the months before the Civil War.

Thor is the only festival author who once ran for president. In 2018, unhappy with Donald Trump’s first term, Thor announced he would challenge the president for the Republican nomination in 2020. Nine months later, he abandoned the plan and re-registered as an Independent.

Known for his political thrillers, Thor’s 25 novels have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. He will be in Tucson with No. 26 — “Cold Zero” — scheduled for release Feb. 10.

The upcoming festival will feature bestselling authors across 15 genres, and there will again be plenty of Tucson in Tucson’s Festival of Books.

Twenty-seven local authors will appear on festival stages, including poet Richard Siken — a finalist for this year’s National Book Award in Poetry with “I Do Know Some Things” — and semifinalist Joy Williams with a collection of stories called “The Pelican Child.”

Former UA President John Schaefer, picture book creator Adam Rex, novelist Lydia Millet and mystery-master Anne Hillerman will also have short drives to the festival.

Schaefer will discuss his life, his career and his recently released memoir, “A Chance to Make a Difference.”

Rex, who has missed only two of our 16 previous book festivals, will be in the children’s area with “The Story of Gumluck and the Heroes.”

Millet comes to the festival with a story collection called “Atavists,” and Hillerman’s latest Navajo Nation whodunit is entitled “Shadow of the Solstice.”

In addition to those Tucsonans listed as Presenting Authors, dozens more will be featured in the festival’s Independent Author Pavilion.

“That so many of our authors live here in Tucson is just one more piece of evidence that this is a city that reads and writes,” McAndrew said. “Our visitors are always surprised to discover the caliber of authors who live and work here.”

McAndrew said the upcoming festival will offer a number of sessions marking America’s 250th anniversary, and for the first time will include authors who originally published their works in Spanish.

Tucson Medical Center will again be the festival’s presenting sponsor. Proceeds will again go to agencies promoting literacy in Southern Arizona. More than $2.5 million has been gifted to local literacy groups since the festival began in 2009.

Footnotes

• Friends and associates of Thomas Cobb, the author of “Crazy Heart,” gathered for a celebration of his life last weekend in his midtown Tucson home. Cobb died Nov. 6 at the age of 78. Raised in Tucson, Cobb earned a diploma from Amphitheater High School and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. He helped Richard Shelton launch the Prison Writing Workshop program and, for a time, co-owned Sixth Street Books with Lynn Shisler. Most of his professional career was spent at Rhode Island College, where he was a professor of English and head of the school’s Creative Writing Program. Cobb was best known for his 1987 novel, “Crazy Heart,” which later became a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Colin Farrell. The role earned Bridges an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2009.
• The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona is now accepting nominations for the city’s next Poet Laureate, succeeding TC Tolbert. The nomination deadline is Jan. 8. The selectee will be announced March 1. To learn more, visit artsfoundtucson.org.
• The UA Poetry Center will be closed until Jan. 5 for additional construction and the school’s Winter Break. The new McCauslin-Smith Garden just south of the center was dedicated in October.