Derek Palacio was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Greenland, New Hampshire. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University. His short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming in, the Kenyon Review and Puerto del Sol, and his poetry has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Pinch, Quarter After Eight and Thin Air Magazine. In early 2013, Nouvella Books will publish his novella chapbook, How to Shake the Other Man. He has received awards from Puerto del Sol for his story “A History of Civility” and from The Ohio State University for Outstanding Graduate Work and Excellence in Teaching. In 2012 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a non-profit creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. Palacio has been an educator since graduating from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2005. He has taught writing at the middle school, high school and college levels. Currently he is completing both a novel and a collection of short stories and teaching at Bucknell and Susquehanna.