Darren was homeschooled in Washington State among the vast, rolling wheat fields east of the mountains. He spent a lot of time outside on his bicycle and drove combines and grain trucks for the harvest long before he had a driver’s license. Always an avid reader, he drew a lot of pictures and wrote stories. In college he studied classics and philosophy and later repaired cars for a living.
He moved to Portland, Oregon with his wife Anna, and they spent a lot of time exploring the Pacific Northwest with their three growing children while Darren built a career in graphic design. Still constantly writing, drawing, and dreaming of stories, he took a class on picture books from Victoria Jamieson (Roller Girl, When Stars are Scattered) and began assembling the plot of his first novel, Light in the Canyon.
Now in southeast Michigan, Darren is busy with his job, family, fixing up a historic home with Anna, and is a graduate student of social work. The wild, lonely beauty of Washington still haunts his daydreams, and sometimes he still works on old cars. He’s completed a number of short stories, is developing several picture books, and is hard at work on a near-future solarpunk book series about a small band of rebels on bicycles.
