Timothy J. Myers is a writer of books for both children and adults. He has published over ten books for children. Tim has won a number of awards and honors for his work. Besides his work as a writer, Tim Myers is also an artist, a songwriter, and a storyteller, as well as an educator in English and education at the university level. For Wisdom Tales, Tim wrote The Thunder Egg, a story about a Native American girl who discovers the egg of a thunderbird. The book is illustrated by Winfield Coleman.

Tim Myers was born in Oregon, but grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado near the famous mountain Pikes Peak.  He’s the oldest of eleven children.  He started writing poetry in sixth grade. Tim had a teacher who encouraged him, and so he continued to write more poetry. Around that same time his mother bought the family an old upright piano. Tim learned to play piano, largely on his own, and then he began to write songs, which he continues to do today.

Besides his studies and other interests, in high school Tim Myers played football and basketball. (He still enjoys playing pick-up basketball whenever he can.)

After high school, Tim Myers attended two years at Creighton University in Omaha, but then transferred back to Colorado College in his hometown of Colorado Springs. He and Priscilla Gehrung were married during Tim’s junior year of college. After graduating with a B.A. in English, Tim went on to earn a Masters in Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Next, Tim and Priscilla both got teaching jobs at an American school in Stavanger, Norway, and, following that, in London, where their son Seth was born.  They soon returned to the United States, and two years later they had another son, Nick.  Tim began telling stories to his young sons and the neighborhood children, and then began to add storytelling to his professional activities. The family next moved to Tokyo, where Tim and Priscilla both taught for three years at the American School in Japan. Readers familiar with Tim J. Myer’s children’s books will recognize the influence of Japan on several of his books.

Tim Myers continued to teach when they moved to Austin, Texas, while Priscilla earned her Ph.D in education.  They had a daughter, Cassie, who was born in 1991. Tim and Priscilla Myers and family moved to Bakersfield, California, and then later to Plattsburgh, New York for teaching positions.

Tim and Priscilla have both taught at a number of schools over the years and both of them continue to do this today. They currently both hold faculty positions at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California.  Incidentally, Cassie is now a writer, too, while Nick has been working as a firefighter in Montana, and Seth as a professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Timothy J. Myers has put out many children’s books, including Basho and the River Stones, which earned many honors, including an on-air reading by Daniel Pinkwater on NPR! His Glad to Be Dad:  A Call to Fatherhood won the inaugural Ben Franklin Digital Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. His other children’s books include Down at the Dino Wash Deluxe, If You Give a T-Rex a Bone, The Out-Foxed Fox, The Furry-Legged Teapot, and others. In addition to his children’s books, Tim Myers is also a poet: he has published over 120 poems, two books of poems, and has won a first place in a national poetry contest judged by John Updike. Tim also writes short stories and non-fiction for adults and children.  And let’s not forget his music and song-writing: one of his songs, “When Lady Smiled at Me,” won the Dan Howell Song of the Year for the Saratoga chapter of the West Coast Songwriters, sending him to the Grand Finals at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. Clearly, Tim J. Myers is a busy man!