Jeff Mann (born August 8)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, Appalachian Heritage, Best Gay Poetry, Best Gay Erotica, and Best Gay Stories. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; five full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, On the Tongue, Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology, A Romantic Mann, and Rebels; two collections of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear and Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South; four novels, Cub, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal, which won the Pauline Réage Novel Award, Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War, which won a Rainbow Award, and Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War, which won a Lambda Literary Award; three novellas, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire, Camp Allegheny, included in History's Passion: Stories of Sex Before Stonewall, and The Saga of Einar and Gisli, included in On the Run: Tales of Gay Pursuit and Passion; a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and two volumes of short fiction, Desire and Devour: Stories of Blood and Sweat and A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award. In May 2013, he was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Desire and Devour won a 2012 Rainbow Award as Best LGBT Erotica and Purgatory as Best Gay Historical. A Romantic Mann won a 2013 Rainbow Award as Best LGBT Biography / Memoir / Non Fiction / Poetry.

Further Readings:

Desire & Devour: Stories of Blood & Sweat by Jeff Mann
Paperback: 202 pages
Publisher: Bear Bones Books (August 25, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590213939
ISBN-13: 978-1590213933
Amazon: Desire & Devour: Stories of Blood & Sweat
Amazon Kindle: Desire & Devour: Stories of Blood & Sweat

Desire. The longing for the touch of men. The edge of hunger. The need for supplicants craving a sweaty embrace, a passionate tryst in the dark.

Devour. To drink, to dispatch, to swallow. To quench one's unimaginable thirst. To leave an empty vessel behind as one walks away into the night.

More than a hundred and fifty years before Dracula ever touched English soil, Scottish Highlander Derek Maclaine became one of the undead to bring a terrible vengeance on those who had taken the man he loved. But revenge could not sate his appetites for sweat and blood through the years; an immortal learns to survive, to love again, as the lives of mortals are bright and brief flames that attract vampires like amorous moths. Award-winning author Jeff Mann has collected his erotic and powerful stories of Derek's unlife, adventures that travel centuries and the globe. Loosen your collar, bare your throat, sigh in expectation, but do not forget to shiver as this burly and brawny stalker of men steps behind you, to brush his beard against your neck as his hands grasp you where you most need to be touched.

Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Mann
Paperback: 286 pages
Publisher: Bear Bones Books (March 5, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590213750
ISBN-13: 978-1590213759
Amazon: Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War
Amazon Kindle: Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War

During the Civil War, two young soldiers on opposite sides find themselves drawn together. One is a war-weary but scholarly Southerner who has seen too much bloodshed, especially the tortures inflicted upon the enemy by his vicious commanding officer, his uncle. The other is a Herculean Yankee captured by the rag-tag Confederate band and forced to become a martyr for all the sins of General Sheridan's fires. When these two find themselves admiring more than one another's spirit and demeanor, when passions erupt between captor and captive, will this new romance survive the arduous trek to Purgatory Mountain?

A Romantic Mann by Jeff Mann
Paperback: 134 pages
Publisher: Lethe Press (April 6, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590211561
ISBN-13: 978-1590211564
Amazon: A Romantic Mann

"A tough, sweaty scent of maleness mingles with the bittersweet sense of loss in Jeff Mann's sexy new book, A Romantic Mann. His voice is tender, confident, intelligent, and engaging. His poems are the utterances of a man at the vantage point of what seems to be the middle age of a life lived gracefully, of one secure in his own skin. Whether recalling hairy chests, hairy thighs, hairy asses or evoking his childhood and his current life in Appalachia or attending to the state of the world, Mann is an urbane observer with a luscious language at his bidding. A tour de force, this is a book I dare anyone not to fall in love with." -Jim Elledge

More Rainbow Awards at my website: elisarolle.com, Rainbow Awards/2012 & 2013