David Treadway Manning, a California native, received a
Ph.D. in chemistry at Caltech, during which a required literature course
planted the seeds of poetry. After a long career as an organic chemist he began
his second life as a poet. Dave was winner of the North Carolina Poetry
Society’s Poet Laureate Award in 1996, 1998 and 2006. Twice a Pushcart nominee, his
poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, New Orleans Review, Tar River
Poetry, 32 Poems Magazine, Rattle, Slipstream and many other journals. He was
winner of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize in Crucible’s Summer 2009 contest, and of
the 2004 Longleaf Chapbook Prize for The
Ice-Carver. His seven chapbooks also include, Out After Dark (2003), Detained
by the Authorities (2007), Light
Sweet Crude (2009), all from Pudding House, and
Continents of Light,
a collection of love poetry from Finishing Line Press in 2010. His full-length
collection, The Flower Sermon, was a
runner-up in Main Street Rag’s 2007 poetry book contest. Most recently Yodeling Fungus (Old Mountain Press,
2010) is a full-length excursion into comedy. He is the current
convener of the Friday Noon Poets of Chapel Hill, with whom he has read his poetry on Chapel Hill public television and was coeditor of Always on Friday (Katherine James Books,
2006), an anthology of poems from that group. Apart from writing, Dave is a
singer, over the years a tenor soloist in church choirs and choral
societies. He lives in Cary, North Carolina, with his wife Doris where he
enjoys hiking and jogging forest trails.