Derek Osborne

About Me

I live in eastern Pennsylvania. My work has appeared in Bartleby-Snopes, PicFic/Folded Word, Pure Slush and Boston Literary among others. My debut novel, Gadabout, made it into the final round of Amazon/Penguin’s First Novel Competition and is currently in re-write. A short story collection is due next spring. To read more or contact, visit: http://gertrudesflat.blogspot.com.

I studied creative writing at Rutgers University. My two mentors were Prof. William Vesterman and Prof. Ronald Christ. Vesterman helped develop my voice; Christ taught me structure. I quit the middle of my senior year to finish a novel called Canada,only to leave the only draft in the seat back pocket on a plane. It was never found.I now use redundant backups everyday.

I started over and got an interview with Knopf and a dinner with Bart Giamatti when he was President of Yale but blew the whole thing to addiction. Around that time I did my first woodworking job in New York. Life happened and suddenly I was fifty with a union shop and successful business. I started writing again.

On URBIS I met Chris Allen.

Why do you write?

I wrote several short stories and a couple of plays during junior and senior high school. 7th grade was my first. Mr. Gasperini let me read it in front of our English class and when I finished Stephanie Smith was staring in a way I'd never known. I wrote another and she stared again, and Craig Sprenger asked if I wanted to hang out and listen to Beggar's Banquet. Writing filled an empty space and I found it gave me power.

Now I write because it's the only thing I do (besides sailing) that lights me up.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Shakespeare, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pynchon, Kafka, Faulkner, Milton, Johnson. In the same order: King Lear and Romeo & Juliet; Sun Also Rises, In Our Time, A Moveable Feast, Great Gatsby; Crying of Lot 49; The Castle; The Bear; Paradise Lost; Bowell's Life. I like most books I read, they all have something to offer, even the bad ones - especially the bad ones.