Derek Palacio

Derek Palacio was born in Evanston, IL, in 1982 but grew up in Greenland, NH. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University. His short fiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol and the Kenyon Review, and his story “Sugarcane” was selected for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013. His novella, How to Shake the Other Man, was published by Nouvella Books in spring 2013. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a non-profit creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. Currently he lives and teaches in Lewisburg, PA, where he is completing a novel about a small Cuban family struggling to remain whole after fleeing the island as part of the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. He is also working on a collection of short stories concerning Cuba’s past, present and future.