Excitement builds as the Tucson Festival of Books approaches. Two full days of author sightings, speeches, food, music and workshops! If you haven’t checked out the author lineup you definitely need to get in gear. On top of our best selling favorites like R.L. Stine, Diana Gabaldon and Margaret Coel, there’s a slew of participating awesome, local and female authors. Don’t miss your chance to support the finest ladies of literature!

Arizona's Finest Female Authors at Tucson Festival of Books

For all you mystery buffs out there Elizabeth Gunn will enthrall you with her tales of suspense from the southwest. Her Sarah Burke series takes place in Tucson and deals with issues of drug smuggling and border crossing. Add to the picture her niece, whom she must raise while being a homicide detective, and you’ve got the perfect tale to keep you reading until the last, juicy page.

Another noteworthy mystery series are the Lena Jones stories written by Betty Webb. Not only does the series captivate us with its grueling mysteries, it also shines light on local politics and social issues. From Native American rights to the destruction of the desert, Webb works our brains in more ways than one. While fiction, these tales are rigged with aspects of social journalism and leaves us wanting to research what’s really happening in this community of ours.

Jan Cleere is possibly the best local historian and public speaker. With titles like, Levi’s and Lace: Arizona Women Who Made History and Amazing Girls of Arizona: True Stories of Young Pioneers, she gifts us with all the desert grrrl power we need! After you catch up on your local lady knowledge, we also recommend Outlaw Tales of Arizona: True Stories of Arizona’s Most Famous Robbers, Rustlers, and Bandits, in which we learn about the rowdies villains of the southwest! This is one amazing woman we can’t wait to see at the festival.

A member of the U of A faculty, Aurelie Sheehan is an esteemed novelist and short story writer. Her collection, Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant, is a brilliantly poetic series of stories about women who break barriers. When we found the title on our shelves, the first story literally made us laugh out loud. (As jaded and cynical as most of us are, that’s a bold feat!) Sheehan has numerous other novels that we haven’t read yet, but believe us, if we could sit in the back room and get away with it, we’d spend all hours of the day there–until we’d read them all!

The Tucson Festival of Books is popping with prominent Arizona women! Take the time this year to meet with them and support their amazing work. If you’re hoping to get a copy signed, give us a call and we’ll check out shelves for you. Make Bookmans part of your festival experience too. You’ll find us at Booth 477 on Cherry at the base of Science City. There’s no better way to support a locals than to purchase their works locally!