Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts, A New York Times Editors' Choice; A Southern Living Best Book of 2018; An Amazon Editors' Best Book of 2018; A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; A Refinery29 Best Book of 2018; A New York Post Most Unforgettable Book of 2018.  

Tessa spent the 2013 season performing with the last American traveling circus sideshow, the World of Wonders. An essay about the sideshow won the 2016 AWP Intro Award in Nonfiction. Her writing can be found in Outside online, The New York Times, Glamour, The Believer, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, The Normal School, Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, [PANK], Brevity, and more.

​Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa got her MFA from the University of Alabama. She's received awards and fellowships from Tin House, The Sewanee Writers' Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Taft Nicholson Center, Writing by Writers, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Tessa taught in prisons and jails for five years, and was a professor of creative writing at Warren Wilson College, in addition to guest teaching at dozens of other colleges and universities around the country. She has guided students on the New York Times summer journeys, and founded Salt Lake City’s Writers in the Schools program. She currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she's at work on her next book, a novel, which will be published by FSG in 2023.

​Around the country, she has performed her one-woman plays in theaters ranging from New York to San Francisco. The scar on her cheek from a 2am whip act is slowly fading.