Derek Chan is a writer and educator from Melbourne, Australia. He holds an MFA from Cornell University, where he was a university fellow, a lecturer in creative writing and academic composition, an editor of EPOCH journal, and a two-time recipient of the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize. He also holds a first-class honors degrees in Literary Studies and Psychology from Monash University, where he received the Arthur Brown Thesis Prize. He is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where he is the recipient of the Presidential Fellowship and the Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Fellowship.

His work has appeared in New England Review, Adroit Journal, Best of Australian Poems, Australian Book Review, Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, the Forward Prize, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship. His writing has been recognized by The Pushcart Prize, the Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry, and Best New Poets. He has received residency fellowships and support from the Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).