Tucson Festival of Books

Tucson Festival of Books Policies

The Tucson Festival of Books operates under the guidance of the following policies.

Freedom of Speech Policy: 

The Tucson Festival of Books (TFoB) strongly supports the First Amendment and will provide the opportunity for attendees to exercise their right to expressive speech / activity in a way that does not disrupt the experience of TFoB exhibitors and other attendees.

Individuals wishing to engage in expressive activity may do so as long as they do not block, impede, or otherwise disrupt pedestrian traffic, access to exhibitors, activities or building entrances or exits. People waiting to enter an event or activity may not be approached. The festival has been approved to amplify sound at multiple sound stages on Saturday and Sunday. In order to ensure that the invited speakers and performers can be heard and are not disrupted, these sound stages are the only areas approved for sound amplification during the Tucson Festival of Books.

Persons engaging in activities that block, impede, or otherwise disrupt access or activities as set forth herein may, at the sole discretion of TFoB staff, be asked to move to an alternate location.

Those wishing to sell items or display signage, must be paid exhibitors/sponsors who have been invited to participate by the festival and must do so only in the confines of their assigned booth/venue.

Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harrassment Policy 

The Tucson Festival of Books is fortunate to have wonderful partners. Among these is the University of Arizona. In addition to hosting the festival on campus, the university allows us to utilize many of its policies and procedures to make the book festival a success. One of those policies is the Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harrassment Policy. In it you will find information about the policy and reporting. We ask that in addition to reporting any incidents to the Dean of Students office, that incidents involving the festival be reported to our office as well. Please report to our main office line: 520-621-0302 or via email at executivedirector@tucsonfestivalofbooks.org. If you prefer, you are also welcome to mail the information to: Tucson Festival of Books, 615 N. Park, Room 101, Tucson, AZ 85721.

Presenter Self-identification Statement

The Tucson Festival of Books takes no steps to verify, determine or otherwise confirm the race, ethnicity and or lineage of its authors, presenters or participants. All claims about history and ancestry of each person participating in the festival are entirely their own. Furthermore, the festival will not deny a qualified author admittance to the festival based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information. We follow the University of Arizona’s Nondiscrimination and Anti-harassment Policy which can be accessed here

Website Policies

Privacy Policy
The Tucson Festival of Books ("Festival") values your right to know what information is collected about your during your visit to our web sites, mobile sites, mobile applications, and other applications (collectively, "Services"), and to any services that display this notice and how that information is used and safeguarded. We respect and are committed to protecting your privacy as you interact with the Festival.

Information Automatically Gathered About All Visitors
We collect aggregate and user-specific information on which pages consumers access or visit. This information is used to generate reports that help us assess the value of an interest in the various web sites and Services we provide. We use the information we collect to improve the content of our Services. We can build a better site and provide better Services if we know which pages our users are visiting, how often they visit and how long they stay on a page.

Our web servers automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, including your IP address (but not the e-mail address), when you utilize our Services. Your IP address does not contain personally identifiable information, nor does it identify you personally. We use this information to deliver our Services to you upon request, to tailor our sites and Services to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our sites.

To help make our Services more responsive to the needs of our visitors, we may utilize a standard feature of browser software called a "cookie." A cookie is a small piece of computer code that is deposited on your hard drive by our site. Browsers typically recognize when a cookie has been sent to your computer and give you the option to refuse or allow it. A cookie does not actually identify you, just the computer or device that you are using to access our Services. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive. Our content partners and Services that are reached from our Services may also assign their own cookies to your browser, a process that we cannot control.

We use cookies to help us tailor our Services to your needs so we can deliver a better and more personalized user experience. It is a cookie, for example, that allows us to deliver to you any personalized information each time you visit our Services.

In addition, we can access cookies later in your current session or in a later session on our Services in order to improve your visit to our Services, as in the following examples:

User Portal
The User Portal requires the use of cookies to identify the signed in user. A User Portal account is automatically created when a user of our web site:

Signing into the User Portal generates a session cookie that persists for the session so as to identify which user is signed in and to display content relevant to that user's interactions with the Festival.

Forms with Multiple Pages
When a user is filling in a complex form that spans multiple pages, such as the Exhibitor Application form, a session cookie will be generated that helps maintain the state between the pages of the form. The use of cookies in this instance is for the purpose of simplifying the software behind the scenes so that there are fewer potential points of failure.

Children under the Age of 13
If you are under the age of 13, do not send us any information about yourself such as your name, address or e-mail address. You may only send us personally identifiable information if your parents have verified to us their consent to the collection of the information.

Emails from Us
Upon registering with our Services, you may begin receiving communications from us. We may also send transactional emails regarding the status of your user account, including confirmations, notices of expiration and renewal, and other related electronic correspondence. If you have signed up for any of our email newsletters, you may stop receiving them if you follow the "unsubscribe" instructions located near the bottom of each newsletter. We may send you an email inviting you to participate in user surveys. Such surveys greatly help us improve our Services and the value of our web sites. Any information you give us in those surveys will not be shared with any third parties.

What We Do With the Information We Gather About You
We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. In some cases, however, we may provide information to legal officials as described in “Compliance with Legal Process” below.

In some cases, we contract with third parties to provide services on our behalf, including credit-card and bill processing, shipping, email distribution, list processing, and analytics or promotions management. We provide these third parties only with the information necessary for them to perform their specific services. These service providers are restricted from using this information in any way other than to provide services to us, and they may not share this information with anyone else nor may they resell this data.

Compliance with Legal Process
We may disclose personal information if we or one of our affiliated companies is required by law to disclose personal information, or if we believe in good faith that such action is necessary to comply with a law or some legal process, to protect or defend our rights and property, to protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our Services or to protect the personal safety or property of our users or the public.

Security Policy
The Tucson Festival of Books ("Festival") values the security of your personal data. We use Secure Socket Layer ("SSL") technology, the industry standard for secure communications across the Internet, to protect all user submitted forms that involve payment information. All of your highly personal information is encrypted to and from our servers including, but not limited to, credit card number, name on card, and billing address, so that the information cannot be read as it travels across the Internet.

In addition, the Festival maintains full PCI compliance, another industry standard for maintaining credit card security, and does not store your credit card information on our servers. We process credit cards immediately over SSL through our payment gateway and then discard the number. We maintain minimal information from our payment gateway's response to generate receipts and to reconcile transactions. What you see in a receipt after a financial transaction is what we see.

In some cases, such as signing up for the Festival newsletter, a third-party vendor will be involved that displays a form to the user. These forms do not normally use SSL to protect them from eavesdropping, but they also do not ask for information such as credit card numbers and billing addresses. See the Privacy Policy section entitled "What We Do With The Information We Gather About You" for more details on third-party vendors.

Refund Policy
The Tucson Festival of Books ("Festival") recognizes that life happens and that cancellations may take place as a result. The Festival sets strict deadlines on refunds as well as limits on the funds that may be refunded. You must agree to the Terms and Conditions, in advance, associated with the particular aspect of the Festival that you sign up for. For example, the Terms and Conditions of the Exhibitor Application includes a section entitled "CANCELLATION POLICY" that details what must happen to cancel, what amounts will be refunded, and what deadlines there are for refunds.

In addition, when paying with a credit or debit card, receipts for the Festival also include the relevant refund or cancellation policy. This makes it easier for you to obtain a refund in the event that you need to do so and makes our jobs easier as well.

Since the Terms and Conditions regarding refunds vary depending on what form is being filled out, we recommend reading the Terms and Conditions. If there are any questions regarding our Refund Policy or any of our Terms and Conditions, please contact us to obtain clarification before proceeding to fill out the forms because we want your Festival experience to be a positive experience.

Shipping and Delivery Policy
The Tucson Festival of Books ("Festival") does not offer merchandise for purchase at this time. We will update this particular policy in the future if this ever changes.