Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award
2026 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Fiction Winner Announced
Congratulations to Tim Bascom,winner of the 2026 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Fiction for Continental Drift: Stories.
The 2026 award presentation will be held on Friday, September 25, 2026, 4:00 p.m., at the Plass Learning Resources Center (1731 Plass Ave), Room 120, the day before the annual Kansas Book Festival on the Washburn University campus.
Bascom is the author of two prize-winning memoirs about years spent in East Africa as a youth: Chameleon Days and Running to the Fire. His essays have been selected for the anthologies Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Travel Writing, and his stories have been published widely. Bascom received his MFA from the University of Iowa and was until recently the director of the Kansas Book Festival. His latest book is The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World (University Press of Kansas, 2026).
Judge Catherine Browder, who won the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in 2023 for Resurrection City: Stories from the Disaster Zone, served as judge. About his selection, she wrote:
"In Continental Drift, writer Tim Bascom has given us a book that matters. Set largely in Africa, or a foreigner’s United States, the characters in these stories encounter their own foreignness as Western culture clashes with an African understanding of the world. In pitch-perfect dialogue and sensual language, Bascom’s people—whether Ethiopian, South Sudanese, South African, Kenyan or American—come alive through pivotal moments, often unsettling, that will shape their understanding of the world. These are memorable stories from a talented writer, a work of fiction that fulfills what the writer John Gardner once defined as the moral responsibility of Art—to explore and rediscover our values and humanness.”
2026 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Fiction (2027 in Nonfiction, 2028 in Poetry)
The Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award "in Poetry" "in Fiction" and "in Creative Nonfiction" alternates yearly for each genre. The prize, of $1,000, will be awarded to a book that meets the guidelines, and the winner will be invited to Washburn University Library for a reading and presentation ceremony.
Behind the name: Learn more about the Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award.
Call for Nominations and Submissions
This award is sponsored by the Center for Kansas Studies, the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at the University Library and the Friends of the Library.
