Raised in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton West Virginia, Jeff Mann is an author of novels, essays, short fiction, a memoir, and poems. A significant portion of his work examines the LGBTQ experience, especially as witnessed in Appalachia. He’s won many awards for his work including a Rainbow Award for Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War , as well as the John Preston Short Fiction Award and many others. Mann is currently associate professor in creative writing at Virginia Tech.