Tessa Fontaine Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Tessa Fontaine is a horror fiction novelist and memoirist best known for her memoir The Electric Woman. She was raised outside San Francisco and went to the University of Alabama for her MFA before attending the University of Utah for her doctorate. In 2012, she received graduate departmental awards at the University of Alabama for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Fontaine has been the winner of the First Year Teaching Award, the Academic Fellowship at the University of Utah, The Truman Capote Award, The National Alumni Fellowship at the University of Alabama, and the Boone Fellowship. She has also been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Writing by Writers, and The Taft Nicholson Center among others. She has taught summer journeys for the New York Times at the Universities of Utah and Alabama and in prisons in Utah and Alabama.

As a child, Tessa Fontaine’s stepfather used to tell her stories about an early friendship with a little person who was a retired sideshow performer. This got her interested in show performances and hence it was not surprising that she got into storytelling and show business. As for writing, Tessa has always been a writer and has written for much of her work. When she was very young, she used to write cautionary poems about being a two-inch tall fairy, guns, and eating some fantastic food and plant items. While she was in elementary school, she started a bunch of novels that had many plot twists involving diamonds and amnesia. She has always felt that she understands herself and the world best by putting it on paper. She has never been very good at oral storytelling and talking about herself. But as long as she is processing facts from her world and writing from her perspective or making things up, she can write the entire day.

In 2013, Tessa Fontaine spent the year performing with World of Wonders, the last American traveling circus sideshow. It was while she was a performer in World of Wonders that she began doing her MFA to cope with her mother’s illness and their tumultuous relationship. During this time, she toured eight states and participated in snake charming, knife throwing, and fire breathing. However, for Fontaine, learning how to eat fire and catch knives was not hard. What was hard were the 16-hour days for days on end while living in semi-trucks. She wanted to follow in the footsteps of her mother who used to perform on the shoulders of surfers in Hawaii and knew she would approve. As such she scorched her eyelashes, untangled snakes from her hair, and swallowed painful swords as a way of escaping from the pain and fear of losing her mother.

While Tessa Fontaine was touring with World of Wonders in 2013, she started thinking of putting her thoughts into words. While she still worked 16-hour days, she used to take obsessive notes and published a few short essays which she loved to call Notes from the Road. However, she never achieved much in that year as all she had to show for it was a pile of notes. It would ultimately take Fontaine two and a half years to write her debut work The Electric Woman. She began writing as soon as she started her doctorate at the University of Utah in 2014. By the time 2016 rolled around, she was working on final edits which she did for a year working with Jenna Johnson the editor from FSG. It would take more than a year after the final edits before she published the memoir in 2018.

Tessa Fontaine published her memoir The Electric Woman in 2018. The work is the story of a daughter who has to push past fear and through life at a time when her mother is seriously ill and she has to support herself working in a traveling sideshow. Tessa Fontaine spent three years in a state of constant emergency as her mother dealt with a series of strokes. But she will not let the loss of language, wheelchairs, and hospitals stop her. She intends to travel with her husband and tour Europe regardless of what happens. As such when she is invited to become a performer in America’s last traveling sideshow known as the World of Wonders, she cannot say no. She becomes a high-voltage Electra, snake charmer, and escape artist who experiences the intense heartbreak and camaraderie of the carnival. Through everything, she trains herself to keep her heart open despite dealing with loss in addition to training her body to look fear in the face. It is a brilliant story about a woman who defies death even as she comes to terms with old-fashioned unconditional love.

In 2024, Tessa Fontaine decided to try her hand at fiction and published The Red Grove. The work is a deep dive into the price of safety, the legacy of violence, and the choices we are sometimes forced to make for the sake of protecting our loved ones. The novel is set in the special and protected Red Grove which rumor has it had a spell cast on it by Tamsen Nightingale the founder of the community. According to some residents, the mountain lions who are often seen in the nearby rangelands guard its people and its mysteries. According to others, the residents are kept safe by the mighty redwoods. However, Gloria, Luce’s mother, has mysteriously disappeared. There is also the mystery of the man who came into town to investigate the mysteries of the Red Grove only to end up dead before Gloria went missing. Luce’s whole world is the Red Grove as she is passionate about its myths, rituals, and mission. However, she knows that even though Gloria is a frustrated free spirit, she would never leave without telling her. She would never leave Roo her little brother and Gem their aunt who depends on her for delicate care. But as she tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of her mother’s disappearance, she finds out that the Red Grove might not be what it seems. She also discovers that sometimes protection comes at a very steep cost.