Derwin Mak's story "Transubstantiation" won the 2006 Aurora Award for Best Short Fiction. The Dragon and the Stars, an anthology that he co-edited with Eric Choi, won the 2011 Aurora Award for Best Related Work. Where the Stars Rise, an anthology that he co-edited with Lucas Law, won the Alberta Book Publishing Award for Speculative Fiction Book of the Year in 2018. Derwin also founded the cosplay competition at Anime North, Canada's largest anime convention. He has degrees in accounting and military history and was the first person to capture a Pokémon inside the Royal Canadian Military Institute.