derek jordan

Derek Jordan is an author and poet, and he was born and raised in Waterbury, Connecticut. He graduated from Wilby High School in 1995. In 1997, in his second year at Western Connecticut State University, Derek was inspired by a poet to try his hand at poetry. Derek began to publish his work in the school newspaper where many students and college professors took notice. Derek, along with his poet friends, began to recite their work to an audience.  

When Derek took an acting class as an elective in his third year at Western, he was assigned to write a short story surrounding the senseless shooting of an African American youth. The professor expressed a strong interest in Derek’s project. The professor’s strong interest in Derek’s short story boosted Derek’s curiosity for novel writing, but his curiosity waned over time. Even though a friend from high school helped spark Derek’s reading interest in 1995, his college classes and work schedule conflicted with any leisure time he had available. When Derek graduated from Western in 2000, he developed an addiction to reading novels but wrote his poetry sparingly.  

Years later, throughout all the short story and novel writing attempts, Derek lost his desire to write fiction and poetry because of the complexities that came with writing, and the general intricacies of his life.  After a lengthy writing hiatus, Derek wrote a poem titled "Runnin" that outlined a glimpse of his problems, but transferred those shortcomings onto a fugitive, the protagonist of the poem. Although Derek's issues weren't lawbreaking, he made them be for the life of the protagonist. Derek’s desire to write peaked, deciding that the name of the book would be titled "Runnin." After writing a few chapters, Derek was noticing a lot of recidivism in the environment he grew up in, especially among his friends. Derek witnessed their struggle to find suitable employment in an unforgiving society but watched them get caught deeper into the prison system for trying to make ends meet. Derek decided to change the protagonist from a fugitive to an ex-convict suffering the aftermath of being released from prison. Since he started writing about a fugitive, Derek started his story over, developing ex-convict Claude Porter and his bold attempt at living a legal life armed with a felon. 

Derek Jordan earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Justice and Law Administration at Western Connecticut State University, and he currently works in the mental health field. Derek is the author of “A Small World,” “A Small World 2: Seek and Destroy,” “Next of Kin,” and the short story “Drought.”