Derek Lubangakene lives and works in Kampala, Uganda. Despite growing up in a house full of books, he only started writing after failing as an origami artist, a sketch-artist, and poet. Between his day job and his moonlighting as a writer, he also works as a contributing editor at Deyu African Magazine, an online repository of contemporary African writing.

He has been long-listed for the 2013 Golden Baobab Early-Chapter Book Prize, the 2017 Writivism Short Story Prize, and an honorable mention in the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize—Migration theme.
His work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Omenana, Enkare Review, River River Literary Journal, Prairie Schooner, The Missing Slate, The Kalahari Review, Lawino Magazine, the Imagine Africa 500 anthology, and with work forthcoming in Escape Pod.

He is currently working on his first novel.