Derrick Austin

Read poems by this poet

Derrick Austin was born in Homestead, Florida. He received his BA from the University of Tampa and, in 2014, an MFA from the University of Michigan. 

Austin is the author of This Elegance (BOA Editions, 2026); Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2021 Isabella Gardener Award and a Lambda Literary Award; Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016), selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A. Poulin Jr. Prize and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. 

His other honors include the 2026 AICA-USA Art Critics Fellowship and the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, the Wallace Stegner Poetry Fellowship, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and the Ron Wallace Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. He lives in New York City.