2022 Award for Writer of the Year

Tom Bissell
Uzbekistan 1996

Tom Bissel

Tom Bissell  was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. He has published ten books, including Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia (2003), The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (2007), Apostle (2016), and Creative Types: And Other Stories (2021).

His work has been awarded the Rome Prize, the 2004 Peace Corps Writers Award for Best Travel Book for Chasing the Sea, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also done extensive screenwriting work for both the video-game industry and Hollywood.

His work on Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End earned him a WGA Award for Best Video Game Writing.

He co-developed the series The Mosquito Coast, based on the novel of the same name by RPCV Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963–65), for Apple Television.

His most well-known book, The Disaster Artist: My Life inside ‘The Room’, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made (2013), co-written with Greg Sestero, was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film.

His writing has been adapted into films by James Franco, Julia Loktey, and Werner Herzog.