A Gay man chronicles his relationship to his native Appalachian culture and society. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many LGBTQ+ people from the mountains flee to urban areas in search of community and broader acceptance. Jeff Mann tells his story as one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and sexual identities. In memoir and poetry, Mann describes his life as an openly gay man who has remained true to his mountain roots. Mann recounts his upbringing in Hinton, a small town in southern West Virginia, as well as his realization of his homosexuality, his early encounters with homophobia, his coterie of supportive lesbian friends, and his initial attempts to escape his native region in hopes of finding a freer life in urban gay communities. Mann depicts his difficult search for a romantic relationship, the family members who have given him the strength to defy convention, his anger against religious intolerance and the violence of homophobia, and his love for the rich folk culture of the Highland South. His character and values shaped by the mountains, Mann has reconciled his sexuality with both traditional definitions of Appalachian manhood and his own attachment to home and kin. Loving Mountains, Loving Men is a compelling, universal story of making peace with oneself and the wider world.

Crooked Letter i offers a collection of first-person nonfiction narratives that reflect the distinct 'coming out' experiences of a complex cross-section of gay, lesbian, and transgendered Southerners from all walks of life and at different stages in their lives. There is the Appalachian widower who, following the death of his wife, decides it's time to tell his church community. There is the young man who left his hometown as a girl, returning hesitant but hopeful for his grandmother's love. There is the adolescent girl who refuses to surrender her soul to Jesus because she is not yet certain of her own beliefs. There is the well-mannered Southern gentleman who hopes his blueberries and biscuits will help ease the awkwardness of coming out to his elderly neighbor. There are the ones who survived the frequent bar raids, arrests, and beatings. But, there is also the first kiss, and the first love. The experiences represented here pivot around a central theme—finally finding language to understand one's identity, and then discovering we were never the only ones. Revealing a vibrant cross-section of Southerners, the writers of these narratives have in common the experience of being Southern and different, but determined against all odds.

This collection, the first of its kind, gathers fiction and poetry from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors from Appalachia. Like much Appalachian literature, these works are pervaded with an attachment to family and the mountain landscape, yet balancing queer and Appalachian identities is an undertaking fraught with conflict. This collection confronts the problematic and complex intersections of place, family, sexuality, gender, and religion with which LGBTQ Appalachians often grapple. With works by established writers such as Dorothy Allison, Silas House, Ann Pancake, Fenton Johnson, and Nickole Brown and emerging writers such as Savannah Sipple, Rahul Mehta, Mesha Maren, and Jonathan Corcoran-and including a mix of original and previously published work-this collection celebrates a literary canon made up of writers who give voice to what it means to be Appalachian and LGBTQ.

In questioning the boundaries between the world and oneself, Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers unflinchingly explores the dark eddies of coming of age and coming out. Kelly McQuain's poems are far roaming in setting and far ranging in style, depicting the richness of a rural West Virginia upbringing as well as contemporary adulthood in the big city and abroad. Glints of humor and glimpses of pathos abound in the imaginative leaps these poems take as they tackle such subjects as LGBTQ sexuality, homophobia, domestic abuse, and racism. Unafraid to push the limits of contemporary sonics, McQuain's work is rich in music and varied in form, with new riffs on the sonnet, the villanelle, and the persona poem. Accessible and lyrical, this debut collection deftly explores the homes we come from and the homes we create-all the while shining with wonder and resolve. Several of the poems won contests including the Bloom chapbook prize, the Glitter Bomb Award, Best New Poets 2000. ... From "No Trespassing" It's me who worries about her mini-strokes and falls, the knot on her head from where she stumbled picking blackberries on the bank. She watches the bees come, stippling themselves with pollen, flowers bending in the breeze. This world is hers, for now-all she covets. Tonight it is a black bear and three cubs up against her window, spilling seeds from a bird feeder hung against the house. My mother stands in the dark by that window, her thin hand, the chill of ghostly glass.

A book of lyric intensity, focusing on love through the radiance of martyrdom and sacrifice. In the poet's journey away from America to the land of Wuthering Heights, he immerses himself in the dark beauty of romantic loss, grieving, and final acceptance.

On the Tongue is an earthy and provocative collection of poetry that weaves a pagan eroticism, at once tender, yet forceful and hard. An excerpt: The purpose of perfection?/To teach us longing./To make us monsters

Not every gay teen yearns for fashion and popular culture. Some boys are pure country folk and like the feel of flannel and the smell of the farm. And they're neither lithe nor muscle-bound but stocky boys, the ones who develop hairy chests, arms, and faces years earlier than their peers. One such seventeen-year-old is Travis Ferrell, shy among most of the other kids at school, but proud of his West Virginia roots. He has not yet admitted his passion for handsome guys--and his idea of what handsome is and what handsome does is not much different from him. Soon he'll learn that he's not unique; gay culture has a name for young men like him. Cubs. Lambda Literary Award-winning author Jeff Mann has written a touching romance for the outsider in us all.

"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, author of H

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 that 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.

A much lauded essayist and poet, Jeff Mann writes of the passion and pain ofbeing a Southern gentleman who happens to be invested in many worlds: the hungers of gay Bear culture; the propensities of leather and bondage; the frustrations of academia; and the perspectives of an Appalachian who has traveled the world. In Binding the God, his second collection of essays, Mann offers readers another tour of his consciousness and experiences. This volume includes essays previously published in Arts and Letters, Second Person Queer, Callaloo, Now and Then, White Crane, Queer and Catholic, and other journals and anthologies.

Outside an isolated cabin, winter fog caresses spruce trees. Inside, two men, lovers, have enacted a plan of revenge, kidnapping the handsome son of the man who wronged one of them. Al, the accomplice, has stalked Rob for weeks, and his infatuation for the young man has grown deeper than he ever anticipated. So much so that he finds himself drawn to protect Rob from the rage and vengeance burning away his partner Jay's insides. Caring for their bound and gagged captive, with each passing day Al finds his power over Rob a potent and irresistible aphrodisiac and his heart dangerously moved. But Jay has no intention of ever allowing the young man to esc

In Ash, acclaimed poet Jeff Mann has created a haunting and intense examination of Norse mythology, extending from the creation of the universe to its end in the flames of Ragnarok. Here are many voices: All-Father Odin, bound to the World Tree; Thor, the protector of mankind and battler of monsters; Balder, the gentle god treacherously slain; Sigurd, killer of a gold-hoarding dragon; Brynhild, love-sick and vengeful Valkyrie; and Surt, the demon who burns the earth and sky to ash. Here are many worlds: a seething snake-pit, a burning mead hall, an open tomb, Valhalla's vigorous feasting and lovemaking, fir forests and Nordic snows. These poems range from the speech of gods and heroes to autobiographical lyrics that use myth as an entry into eternal human concerns: love, hate, loss, death, and rebirth.

The autobiographical essays in Edge offer insight into the passions of acclaimed author Jeff Mann. These memories, insightful as they are endearing, range from his boyhood obsession with the gothic allure of Dark Shadows, to the doubt and pain of being a Southerner, and so at the edge of the gay community, and the appeal of leather bars and bear culture. Mann also visits gay meccas in these essays--the resorts of Key West, Provincetown, and Rehoboth Beach, along with several European destinations such as Germany, Ireland, Belgium, and Scotland, have important cameos. But he is never an idle traveler--he is challenged by his experiences, and his observations reveal the thoughts of many gay men. Along the way Mann ruminates on a variety of subjects, from lost lovers to wearing kilts, theophany, Sylvia Plath, adult videos, and bathhouses.