[3] They later moved to New Jersey where she worked as a teacher and participated in a special program, teaching poetry to students from kindergarten through high school.
[7] Derricotte published her first poetry collection, The Empress of the Death House, (Lotus Press) in 1978.
In 1996, Norton Publishing Company accepted for publication Derricotte's literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, An Interior Journey, a book she began in 1974 when her family became one of the first black families to move into Upper Montclair, New Jersey.
[8] Derricotte co-founded the Cave Canem Foundation, a national poetry organization in 1996, with American writer, Cornelius Eady.
Cave Canem is a national poetry organization that supports the professional growth of African- American poets.
In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.
[9] The University of Pittsburgh Press published Derricotte's fourth, fifth and sixth poetry collections: Tender in 1997, The Undertaker's Daughter in 2011, and "I": New and Selected Poems in 2019.