Derrick Austin is the author of “Tenderness” (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and “Trouble the Water” (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, “Black Sand,” was published by Foundlings Press in 2022. His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and the Norma Faber First Book Award. “Tenderness” was a finalist for a Golden Poppy Award, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and a Northern California Book Award.

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry 2015, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The Nation, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, New England Review and Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion. He has had poems and essays commissioned by The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Museum, Craft Contemporary, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, LAXART, and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

His honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and Stanford University. Most recently he was a 2022–2023 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar.

The Visiting Writers Reading Series is sponsored by the Department of English, the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, the Lawrence Parke Murphy and Robert Goldstein Trust, and by generous donations from the extended Whitman community.