Former Newton resident Bascom to speak on growing up in Ethiopia

Former Newton resident Tim Bascom will speak at an educational event at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 223 E. Fourth St. N., Saturday.

Starting at 7 p.m., Bascom will be reading excerpts from his new book “Running to the Fire,” a memoir of growing up in revolutionary Ethiopia in the 1970s.

“Running to the Fire” focuses on the turbulent year Bascom’s family experienced when traveling into revolutionary Ethiopia. As a teenager, he found it exhilarating to live so close to the constant danger. While attending boarding school is Addis Ababa, he made bonds with other young people due to their shared sense of threat.

During his time there, he writes about how he fell in love for the first time, but was separated from his first love by the politics that affected everyone who lives in the area. All around the country, missionaries were held under house arrest while communists seized the hospitals and schools. One of his friend’s father was imprisoned as a suspected CIA agent and another was killed by raiding Somalis.

Bascom wrote about his struggles with his faith and his role within the conflict as a white American Christian missionary’s child. As he reflects as an adult, he explored the historical, cultural and religious contexts that led to the conflict, asking himself the tough question he would rather leave alone. He wondered why he found a strange fulfillment in being young and idealistic in the middle of what was a kind of holy war.

Bascom has received praise for his book from several writers and editors through out the business.

“Tim Bascom has beautifully captured the excitement and confusion of traveling with parents who believe they can make a difference in the world. How do human beings humbly cross cultural and geographic borders? How do we stand with those being persecuted by their own government or clan? Tim is not afraid to ask big questions—and offer a few answers from his years as a teenager in Ethiopia,” Co-Founder of Ethiopia Reads Jane Kurtz said.

Bascom received his B.A. in English Literature from Wheaton College, M.A. in English Literature from the University of Kansas and M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Before becoming the Director of Creative Writing and Assistant Professor of English at Waldorf College, Bascom taught creative writing at Drake University and the University of Missouri. He is also an author of a novel, a collection of essays and a prize-winning memoir “Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia.”