Tim Bascom is the author of a novel, a short fiction collection, three essay collections, and two prize-winning memoirs about his youth in East Africa, Chameleon Days y Running to the Fire. His essays have been selected for Best Creative Nonfiction y Best American Travel Writing. His short fiction has appeared in journals including Zone 3, Front Range Reviewy Flint Hills Review and has earned the Briar Cliff Fiction Prize and the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award.

Bascom earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and taught creative writing at the college level for 20 years. He also led workshops for 15 years at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City. A former director of the Kansas Book Festival, his most recent book is The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World, published in 2026 by the University Press of Kansas.

I offer readings from my books and writing workshops, with programs tailored to your needs and available funding. My standard fees are listed below:

Primary Performance Fee: $250 for one-hour presentation
Workshop Fee: $400 for two-hour session, $700 for full day workshops (Two sessions / group critique session)

Travel and lodging feeds to be negotiated separately

I am an experienced guest author who has presented readings at universities, libraries, churches, retreat centers, and major writing conferences. I have also led dozens of writing workshops throughout the Midwest and overseas.

My author presentations combine short readings with background information and often include visual imagery. I invite audience discussion and allow time for questions at the end. I have presented in more than fifteen Kansas communities and welcome opportunities to visit smaller towns.

I tailor writing workshops to the interests and needs of each group. Past topics include:

• Formed by Family: Writing About Those Who Shape Us
• Stepping Out of the Story-telling Box: Fiction that Has a Wider Reach
• Truth Be Told: Writing the Essay of Social Witness
• Larger than Life: Writing a Memoir About More than the Self
• An Enormous Eye: Writing the Reflective Essay
• The Journey Within: Travel Writing and Transcendence

I love leading workshops and have worked with youth and adults in many settings. I can guide beginning writers through opening scenes for short stories or memory-based narrative essays, as I have done with high school students at a writing festival I started in Iowa.

For more advanced writers, I offer opportunities to experiment with creative nonfiction forms, including reflective, braided, segmented, and lyric essays. Workshops can also explore specific genres, such as coming-of-age memoir, speculative fiction, suspense, and travel writing. I also help writers understand how and when creative imagination can strengthen fact-based writing.