Pencil-sketch adapted photograph taken at the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative fall gathering in October 2014 at the Highland Center in New Market, TN (photo courtesy: Scott Goebel)
John C. Mannone has over 1000 works in venues such as North Dakota Quarterly, Adanna Literary Journal, Nthanda Review, Anacua Literary Arts Journal, Nadwah: Poetry in Translation, Poetry South, Blue Fifth Review, Peacock Journal, Foreign Literary Journal, Red Coyote, Azahares Literary Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Annals of Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, Intima: Journal of Narrative Medicine, Inscape Literary Journal, Windhover, Artemis Journal, Southern Poetry Anthology (NC), Still: The Journal, Town Creek Poetry, Negative Capability, Tupelo Press, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, and many others. He’s the author of four literary poetry collections: Apocalypse (Hiraeth Publishing (formerly Alban Lake Publishing), 2015), 3rd place winner for the (chapbook-length) 2017 Elgin Book Award; Disabled Monsters (The Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015) featured at the Southern Festival of Books; Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (The Linnet’s Wings Press, 2021); and Sacred Flute (Iris Press, forthcoming 2021-2022). He’s the poetry editor forSilver Blade, Liquid Imagination, Abyss & Apex, and American Diversity Report.
Curated by Grace Writers, he was awarded the 2020 Carol Owen Memorial Fiction Award and 2nd place for the 2021 Excellence in Poetry Award. He’s recipient of the 2017 Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian literature and has won the 2015 and 2017 Joy Margrave award for creative nonfiction as well as the 2015 poetry award, and the 2018 children’s literature award, all curated by Tennessee Mountain Writers. He won the 2020 Dwarf Stars Award for 10-line speculative poetry or less, curated by Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). He has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, as well as for the Rhysling poetry award, Best of the Net, and Best Micro Fiction Award. He’s been awarded two Weymouth writing residencies. He also won the 2017 Horror Writers Association Scholarship. He was the 2018 Celebrity Judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
You can learn more about his aesthetics as a writer in a 2011 Six Questions interview. But the short of it is that he seeks literary quality poetry (even that which is speculative) that has literary depth. See also a more recent and protracted interview by Terrie Relf: A Day in the Life Interview Series.
Outside literary circles, he has been a professor of physics and a nuclear consultant. He is active in astronomy outreach and research and has served as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador for the Great State of Tennessee (2008-2014). He was invited to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston (May 2011) as part of a special panel on teaching strategies. He is noted for using poetry in the astronomy classroom and is often an invited speaker to astronomy-related events. He had served as senior editor for the Journal of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomy (2006-2011). He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.He is a Trustee/Director for Silver Pen, a 501(c)(3) organization designed to help writers, editors, and publishers achieve excellence. He is the poetry editor of Silver Blade (Aug 2010-present) and after serving as an associate editor for a couple years, he advanced to senior poetry editor of Abyss & Apex Magazine of Speculative Fiction (Jan 2014-present). He was the first guest poetry editor for a London-based magazine, Inkspill (Spring 2011). He also has/will serve as guest poetry editor for Eye To The Telescope (Issue 14 October 2014), an online magazine of the SFPA, as well as guest editor for Subprimal Poetry Art (Spring 2016). Effective September 2016, he began serving as poetry editor for Liquid Imagination, and as of September 2019, for American Diversity Report. He is an active member of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild (President 2016-2019; Director of Programs 2010-2021). He is a charter member as Frequent Contributor to the Songs of Eretz Poetry Review
He writes spiritual poetry and has been sharing it through his PoeticWord Ministries in churches and other venues, including extensively the secular literary markets, since August 2005. See my May 2020 craft article published in Credo Espoir, On Writing Christian Poetry.
Updated May 12, 2021
John C. Mannone: The Art of Poetry 