Max Wolf Valerio (born February 16, 1957, in Heidelberg, West Germany) is an American poet, memoir writer, essayist and actor. He has lived for many years in San Francisco, California. Valerio described his transition and experiences as a trans man in the 2006 memoir The Testosterone Files. He also writes and performs poetry, and has acted in films and appeared in many documentaries. Early life Valerio identifies his mother as being of Blackfoot descent, specifically from the Kainai in Alberta, Canada. Valerio's father is Spanish. Valerio has researched his heritage and inferred that his paternal ancestors were crypto-Jews who had become conversos but secretly handed on Sephardic Jewish traditions. Valerio's father was in the United States Army for 20 years, which caused them to move frequently in the United States and Europe. Max was born in a US Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. Valerio lived in many US states including Maryland, Washington, California, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado, as well as in Canada, and again in Germany as a child and teenager. Growing up Valerio had a hard time relating to girls. He felt that he did not fit in because of his masculine nature and at times would offer to play male roles, which went unapproved by the girls that he was attempting to play with. Valerio imagined himself as a boy when growing up and could not imagine himself growing into a woman. He felt he was always male and identified with male children/adults. Valerio would cry himself to sleep as a child wishing to be a boy. He decided to identify himself as a lesbian as a teen because it made the most sense to him at the time. He came out as a lesbian feminist in college in 1975. Valerio could not relate to lesbian sex. Valerio started to feel more male and a male gender identity started to come back from childhood. In 1988, after discussions with a friend and roommate who was formally transitioning from male to female, Valerio realized that he was transsexual and began considering a sex change. Max found the FTM Organization in San Francisco run by Lou Sullivan and started attending meetings. Valerio was amazed by the other female to male trans people and shifted his identity from that of a lesbian to a trans man. Transition Valerio transitioned in 1989 from female to male. Valerio's initial exposure to transsexual information