Tim Bascom spent half his childhood in Kansas and the other half in East Africa. Living and traveling around the world, soccer was his constant. His latest book, The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World, explores why soccer matters in everyday life, and how this simple yet extraordinary game brings people together.

Bascom talks about his own life as seen from a soccer pitch: how the game brought him sanity as a youth during a brutal revolution in Ethiopia; how the game bridged cultural divides between him and other players on fields in Chicago, Canterbury, and Johannesburg; and how the game continues to enrich his life as he plays on a cross-cultural team in a Kansas college town.

Bascom is the author of two prize-winning memoirs, Chameleon Days and Running to the Fire; two essay collections, The Comfort Trap and Climbing Lessons; a collection of short stories, Continental Drift; and the novel Squatters’ Rites. He is the former director of the Kansas Book Festival.