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Born in Charleston, South Carolina, where his great-grandmother had had an affair with George Gershwin, Joel Derfner fled the South as soon as he possibly could, and went on to receive his B.A. in linguistics from Harvard. A year after he graduated, his thesis on the Abkhaz language was shown to be completely wrong, as the word he had been translating as “who” turned out to be not a noun but a verb. Realizing astutely that linguistics was not his métier, he moved to New York to get an M.F.A. in musical theater writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
He dated the man he thought was his True Love for two and a half years; the exquisite pangs of bitterness he felt at their breakup and the consequent depravities into which he threw himself resulted in his first book, Gay Haiku (Broadway, 2005):
“I’m coming!” you shout,
As if no one had ever
Managed it before. |
Joel's book, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever, will be available for sale at the conference. It can also be purchased by going to www.joelderfner.com. |
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Gay Haiku went into a second printing within two weeks of its release.
His realization that work in publishing is both more secure and better paid than work in musical theater (alas, he’s not kidding) resulted in his second book, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever and What Ended Up Happening Instead (Broadway, 2008), re-released a year later in paperback with a foreword by Elton John, who writes, “Swish is the most moving book I’ve ever read about being gay. But it’s not just about being gay; it’s about being human.” He is currently at work on a third book, tentatively titled Lawfully Wedded Husband: How I Tried to Destroy America With My Gay Marriage.
Periodicals for which Joel has written include Out, The Advocate, Time Out: New York, Genre, HX, and other print organs some of which are even still in distribution. (He’s also written for several periodicals that have gone the way of all flesh, but he wishes to point out that in none of these cases is he responsible for the failure of the magazine, not even the one whose editor slept with him and then never paid him for his article, though he will admit to a feeling that in this case the magazine got what was coming to it.)
In 2010 he co-starred in Sundance Channel’s reality soap Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys as the nervous groom accompanied on his way to the altar by his inexplicably single friend Sarah. The season finale showed his wedding in Iowa, the first legal wedding of a same-sex couple in America on television.
Musicals to which he has composed the scores include Signs of Life (book by Peter Ullian and lyrics by Len Schiff), produced off-Broadway in 2010, Postcards From Another Planet (book and lyrics by Tony Award winner Rachel Sheinkin), produced in London in 2004, and Spirit Child (book and additional lyrics by John Herin), commissioned by and produced at the Thomas Pullen School for the Arts in Washington, D.C. Other current projects include Another Annette (book and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein) and Cthusical (book by Peter Ullian and lyrics by Len Schiff). Joel is a grateful alumnus of the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU, where he is now on the faculty.
Joel also is or has been a knitter, cheerleader, actor, singer, aerobics instructor, go-go boy, and primary-school math teacher. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband—a psychiatrist too blinded by his charms to realize what he’s gotten himself into—and two small, fluffy dogs. He has been fired by the Public Theater, Harvard University, and the Anglo-Catholic Church. |
