URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2018_Melissa-McCarthy

The Inherently High Stakes of the Thriller Genre written by Alex Kahn

Until the ideas can be connected, Nikitas says he keeps them in his thoughts rather than writing them down. He subscribes to Stephen King’s adage that nothing that you have to write down to remember is worth remembering. Nikitas’ ideas originate from two sources. First are ideas created from his experience, from growing up with a single mother in New Hampshire to adolescence in suburban New York to an academic career spanning the Eastern seaboard. Nikitas attained his bachelor’s degree in English at SUNY (State University of New York) Brockport, before venturing to the University of North Carolina, Wilmington for his master’s degree, and Georgia State University for his doctorate. The environment is a reason Nikitas chose to be a professor at URI. “I wanted to be back in New England, my home region and an environment that inspires me as

Derek Nikitas, novelist and University of Rhode Island (URI) assistant professor of creative writing, describes himself as someone who is cautious by nature and not prone to making extreme decisions. The same, however, does not hold true for the people Nikitas weaves into his novels, short stories and scripts. “I like putting people in extreme situations to test their mettle as characters,” Nikitas says. Rather than focus on a single character, crime scenario, or news phenomenon, the author of three novels methodically cultivates ideas. “I think of story elements like oil on the surface of soup – those little individual circles of oil on top of the soup, and you can connect them with a fork and they become one big thing,” he says. “That’s kind of what it is for me.”

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