TERRY TARNOFF
Author of The Bone Man of Benares, a wild-hearted celebration of a book, a rollicking escapade to the farthest reaches of the globe, a tumultuous love story, a spiritual odyssey, a cultural chronicle and a delicious escape to Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius, India, Nepal, Laos and Bali in a time before tours and guidebooks. In the early 70s, Terry left the United States with sixteen harmonicas and a change of clothes and didn’t return for eight years. He was one of a new generation of expatriates who were fed up with the war and their own culture, who began “dropping out” to venture off to the remotest and most exotic outposts of the world. The Bone Man of Benares is his raucous and revelatory journey. He is a fevered, risk-taking writer with an uncanny ability to render place.
Listening to Terry's story is a visceral, transportive experience where you find yourself trapped in a hotel room in Bangkok with strung-out Zed, falling in love with Annika in the snow drift that is Stockholm in the winter, playing harmonica in an African club in Mombasa, smoking a chillum with the lepers and sadhus in Benares, trance-dancing with Tibetans at a death ceremony in Manali, being surrounded in your car by Masai Warriors in Tanzania. With an outrageous sense of humor, a repugnance for things that critter or slither, and a healthy dose of pathos, Terry makes a sublime travel companion. His book, a celebration of difference and cross-cultural discovery, is a gift for the complicated and fearsome times in which we live. The Bone Man of Benares is a lunatic bird of a book, flapping, singing, soaring, often all at the same time.
Terry’s riveting lectures reflect the humor, passion, and inspiration of his writing. He’s been published in six countries and four languages, and has been compared to Herman Hesse, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and E. M. Forster. He has also adapted the book into a highly acclaimed play that opened in San Francisco and moves soon to Chicago. Film rights have been optioned and the project is making the rounds in Hollywood. In addition to speaking at colleges and universities, Terry has read to overflow crowds at City Lights Bookstore and the Beat Museum, was featured on a live national broadcast with Australian Public Radio, and has appeared at many literary festivals, readings, and events. Responding to today’s cultural climate of conformity and political climate of fear, Terry’s exuberant lectures uplift and enlighten a new generation in desperate need of hope. He speaks their language, hears their music, and offers alternatives to a world slowly closing itself off behind borders and fences.
Contact the lecture bureau to schedule Terry Tarnoff for your next event.
the lecture bureau 
7 Crescent Street Cambridge, MA 02138 888-912-0355
