Waldorf professor to read from personal memoir about childhood in East Africa

FOREST CITY – Waldorf College’s Creative Writing Department and the Luise V. Hanson Library are hosting a reading by Waldorf faculty member and author Tim Bascom on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. in the Library Lounge.

Bascom, Waldorf’s director of creative writing and assistant professor of English, will read a published excerpt from his new memoir Running to the Fire. As the son of medical missionaries, he spent part of his childhood in East Africa, and the memoir chronicles his time living in Ethiopia during a Marxist revolution.

“When I began working on Running to the Fire, I was intrigued by a single question: why was that turbulent year one of the best years of my life?” explained Bascom. “The memoir is an exploration of this youthful desire to live life ‘large.’ It’s also an exploration of the ways that we find meaningful solidarity under persecution.”

With recent uprisings abroad, Bascom’s memoir relates to many of today’s headlines. “I’d like to think it is a very relevant story in the current era, since revolutions have broken out all over North Africa and the Mid-East, and they are being led, generally, by very idealistic youth,” he said.

Bascom has authored three books and his work has appeared in several literary journals, including North American Review, Natural Bridge, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Slant. His poetry, essays and short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Best Creative Nonfiction, Best American Travel Writing, and most recently Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie: Midwestern Writers on Food.

Bascom’s work, including his first memoir Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia, is available to check out from the Luise V. Hanson Library.

The public is welcome to attend the free reading. Light refreshments will be served.