Jeff Mann
Biographical Information
Jeff Mann was born in August 1959 in Clifton Forge, VA, and spent his early childhood in Covington, VA. Both parents worked—his mother in the payroll office of the Westvaco paper mill and his father as a schoolteacher. In 1968, nine-year-old Jeff moved with his family to Summers County, WV, where he attended school, eventually graduating from Hinton High School in 1977. The young man learned from his mother to appreciate the traditional Appalachian values of politeness and hospitality and to appreciate reading and the outdoors from his father. While in high school, Mann met tenth-grade biology teacher Jo Davison, who came out to him as a lesbian and helped him come out about his own sexuality. Davison mentored and supported Mann through his high school explorations, including lending him his first gay novel, Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner.
After high school, Mann fled Hinton for the more-metropolitan Morgantown, WV, attending West Virginia University. He combined his love of books and of nature in his studies, earning a B.A. in English and a B.S.R. in Recreation/Nature Interpretation in 1981. It was while at WVU that Mann became interested in poetry as a form of personal expression, studying with poetry professor Winston Fuller. He returned to WVU in 1982 to begin work on an M.A. in English, graduating two years later. He studied under Professor Fuller again as he completed his creative thesis, The German Darkness.
Mann spent the next few years as a wandering poet-scholar-instructor, teaching at WVU, George Washington University, Fairmont State College, and Waynesburg College. He moved to Blacksburg, VA, in 1989, serving as an instructor in the English Department at Virginia Tech. In 2003, he was hired by Virginia Tech as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. In 2007, Mann became an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech.
As a writer, Mann is diverse and intense, publishing remarkable poetry, penetrating and profound memoir, and highly erotic short fiction. His work is deeply personal, drawing from his own passions and ideals to craft new ideas or make old ones fresh in rich prose and passionate verse. As Killian Melloy remarked in an interview with Mann for Boston Edge:
Reading his work, it’s clear that Mann’s loves are few but profound: rugged men, an equally rugged stripe of sexual sharing, the potency of the written word to engage deep-seated emotions that lay well beyond any pleasingly pretty arrangement of phrases. Being from the Appalachians, Mann also demonstrates a love for that region’s cuisine, praising it with rapt reverence not only in his verse but in his BDSM stories…But his most penetrating love is poetry. Even Mann’s prose is poetic, and when it comes to writing poetry, his stanzas are just as erotic as any well-penned story of sexual heroics.
His verse has appeared in innumerable periodicals, reviews, and anthologies, including Laurel Review, Calliope, Parnassus Literary Journal, Antietam Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, The Cream City Review, White Crane, and numerous others. His first three published poetry collections — Bliss (1998), Mountain Fireflies (2000), and Flint Shards from Sussex (2000) — all were winners in poetry competitions. He published a compilation collection, Bones Washed with Wine, in 2003 that includes much of the work from the earlier collections. His work was included in 1999’s Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999. His most recent poetry collection, On the Tongue, was published by Gival Press in 2006 and it too garnered its author both awards and acclaim. In addition, he has published two memoir works – Edge (2003), a collection of essays, and Loving Mountains, Loving Men (2005), a combined prose-poetry memoir of being both gay and Appalachian.
And then there are his erotic works—short fiction unashamedly sexual yet still deeply lyrical. His works have appeared in collections and anthologies, including Devoured in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire and "A History of Barbed Wire" in Best Gay Erotica 2004. In 2006, Suspect Thoughts Press released A History of Barbed Wire, a collection of Mann’s erotic fiction fantasies. Erotic fiction is certainly a long-standing literary genre, but it traditionally has not been one that earned its authors recognition or respect. Commenting on his own work in an interview with Boston Edge, Mann discussed this tendency to devalue erotica: “I try to resist the temptation to leave sexual elements out of my work because I’m sick of America’s erotophobia. Why should a piece of writing be regarded as less skillful or less important artistically because it is frank about sexuality? Especially queer sexuality, or BDSM sexuality.”
Jeff Mann is many things – he is a poet, a memoirist, a fiction author, a teacher, a musician, a naturalist, an openly gay man, and an openly pagan worshipper in a largely Christian world. Each of these personalities contributes to his work, giving it a unique and powerful voice in the Appalachian canon.
Critical Responses
It’s never easy being different, no matter how that difference manifests itself. Some hide their differences; some exploit them for fame or notoriety. Others use them to create art – pictures, words, dramas, poems, sounds – that touch, inspire, and challenge the rest of us and the ordinary ways we see and experience the world. Jeff Mann is such an artist, and many critics have praised his work for its power and perception. Writing in Appalachian Heritage, Michael Shannon Friedman opens his article, entitled “An Appreciation of His Literary Work,” with this paragraph:
Jeff Mann’s success as a poet is made especially interesting since he identifies himself as both southern/Appalachian and openly (very openly) gay. In both his poetry and prose, the tension between Mann the genteel, erudite southern gentleman scholar and Mann the leather-loving gay satyr makes for an entertaining, richly descriptive and ultimately soulful mediation on what it means to be alive, to inhabit a body, to experience and understand pain, loss, love, and beauty.
It is this dichotomy of tensions that helps give Mann’s work its powerful, and unique, perspectives. Continuing to explore Mann’s literary voice, Friedman goes on to comment “True to the Transcendentalist spirit, he refuses to back away from the gritty, sweaty, salty facts of the flesh and the natural world, yet at the same time he delivers the kind of pungent, now-I-see aphorisms we crave and require from great writers.” Another Appalachian Heritage critic, Edwina Pendarvis, praised Mann’s literary worldview – “His work is honest and strong; it never falls into cynicism, despite the embattled condition in which he must have found himself.” Danny Miller, coeditor of An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature, wrote of Loving Mountains, Loving Men, “His character and values shaped by the mountains, Mann has reconciled his homosexuality with both traditional definitions of Appalachian manhood and his own attachment to home and kin. Loving Mountains, Loving Men is the compelling, universal story of making peace with oneself and the wider world.”
In addition to such praise, his work has garnered awards. Flint Shards from Sussex was chosen winner of the 1999 Gival Press Poetry Contest, and Bliss and Mountain Fireflies were each selected as chapbook contest winners (Stonewall Chapbook Competition and Poetic Matrix Chapbook Series respectively). Most recently, A History of Barbed Wire received the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Erotica.
In a region and culture known for storytellers and for strong souls determined to live their own ways, Jeff Mann has managed to hold fast to his Appalachian identity and has never shied from expressing it in his literary works. He shares with us his passionate drive to live and love as he sees fit, and sheds light into worlds—of culture and sexuality—we might otherwise never see. As with all great literature, it is impossible to experience his work and remain untouched by that which is encountered.
Works Published
- Bliss
- Mountain Fireflies
- Flint Shards from Sussex
- Bones Washed with Wine
- Edge
- "Devoured" in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire
- Loving Mountains, Loving Men
- On the Tongue
- A History of Barbed Wire
Selected Bibliography
Allison, Shane. "Southern Bears, Well-Stocked Liquor Cabinets, and Bible Belt Dungeon Fantasies: Shane Allison Talks to Jeff Mann about A History of Barbed Wire." Velvet Mafia. http://velvetmafia.com/interview/22.mann.php.
Baird, Rebecca, and Kathryn Staley. “Mountaineer Queer: An Interview with Jeff Mann.” Appalachian Journal 35.1-2 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008): 58-75.
Burack, Cynthia. “Mountain Mann: A Biographical Sketch.” Appalachian Heritage 34.3 (Summer 2006): 10-12.
Friedman, Michael Shannon. “An Appreciation of His Literary Work.” Appalachian Heritage 34.3 (Summer 2006): 28-31.
Jaffe, Daniel M. "Talking Across the Table: Jeff Mann, an Interview." BiblioBuffet. http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bb/content/view/405/198/.
Lanier, Parks. “And They Thought He Was Quare.” Appalachian Heritage 34.3 (Summer 2006): 8-9.
Macy, Beth. “The ‘Brokeback Professor.’” The Roanoke Times 17 Feb. 2006: Extra 1, 3.
Melloy, Kilian. “Sweetness and Light: EDGE Chats with Jeff Mann.” Edge 10 Aug. 2006. http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ci=108&ch=entertainment&sc=books&sc2=features&sc3=&id=2508.
Mohring, Ron. “12 Questions: An Interview with Jeff Mann.” RFD 30.3 (Spring 2004): 11-13.
Mooney, Steve. “In Tension: A Profile of Jeff Mann.” A Feast of Words 14 (Spring/Summer 1999): 2, 8.
Oderman, Kevin. “A Visit from Jeff Mann.” Appalachian Heritage 34.3 (Summer 2006): 32-33.
Pendarvis, Edwina. “Writing a New World.” Appalachian Heritage 34.3 (Summer 2006): 22-23.
“Thank Goddess I’m a Gay Country Boy.” Feast of Fools 225 (16 Jan. 2006). 3 Sept. 2006 .
Vera, Dan, and Bo Young. “Loving Mountains, Loving Men: Dan Vera and Bo Young Speak with the Writer Jeff Mann about Gay Rural Life, Poetry & Food.” White Crane 68 (Spring 2006): 5-8.
Author Website
Jeff Mann