Derick Burleson is the author of Never Night (Marick Press 2008). His first collection of poems, Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94, won the 2000 Felix Pollak

Felix Pollak

Felix Pollak was an American poet and librarian.Pollak was born in Vienna, Austria in 1909 to Geza Pollak and Helene Schneider Pollak. A Jew and liberal anti-fascist, he studied law and theater at the University of Vienna, but emigrated to the United States after the occupation of Austria by Nazi...

 Prize in Poetry. He was also the recipient of a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review is a Literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College. The Review was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959...

, The Paris Review, Poetry, and many other journals.¹ He lived and taught English in Rwanda in the two years leading up to the genocide which took place in 1994. A recipient of a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

University of Alaska Fairbanks

The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....

, and lives with his partner and daughter in Two Rivers, Alaska

Two Rivers, Alaska

Two Rivers is an unincorporated area of homes between mile 13 and mile 25 along the Chena Hot Springs Road, northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska...

.