Derek McCormack

Who is Derek McCormack?

Jonathon Derek McCormack is a Canadian novelist and short story writer whose work is characterized by its extreme brevity and its humorous, often distinctly queer forms of sexual darkness. Born and raised in Peterborough, Ontario, he currently lives in Toronto.

McCormack's first book, 1996's Dark Rides, was published by Gutter Press, a small Canadian press founded by Sam Hiyate as part of a mid-1990s boomlet in alternative publishing in Toronto. That first book was edited by Ken Sparling, who left his aggressively minimalist imprint on it and McCormack's emerging style. The author/editor relationship was reversed in 2005, when McCormack edited Sparling's For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers.

The subject of positive reviews and other media coverage, McCormack was frequently described at the beginning of his career as being part of a new generation of Canadian writers, most notably in a 1996 Globe and Mail feature about him, Evan Solomon, Russell Smith and Andrew Pyper.

But unlike Solomon, Smith and Pyper, McCormack never evinced any particular desire for commercial success, and his books stayed short and dark, and were published by a succession of small presses.