Katie Manning

Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is the author of Tasty Other, which won the 2016 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her fifth chapbook, 28,065 Nights, was published by River Glass Books in 2020. Her poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, december, The Lascaux Review, Kahini Quarterly, New Letters, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and many other venues. She lives in San Diego with her spouse and sons.

Early Life
Katie grew up in Phoenix, Arizona

Goals
"'I have so many writing goals, but I think I can summarize them like this: 1) Keep writing, and don't worry so much about awards/accolades. 2) Encourage and promote other writers.'"

Inspirations
"'I began creating poems as a child because I fell in love with the sounds of language and wanted to play. By age 10, I was writing poems to call out racism and injustice, and as an adult I've found myself writing often about women who have been left nameless or omitted from stories entirely. So many things can inspire these poems though: conversations, art, familiar stories, my kids, science... I'm always open to language and imagery that might spark a poem.'"

Philosophy
"'I write to connect with other people: readers and other writers in my own time, but also writers from the past and, I hope, future readers and writers too. People often talk about writing as a solitary activity, and the act itself can be, but I think it's the hope of connection keeps me reading and writing.'"

Publications
Most recent books

28,065 Nights (River Glass Books, 2020)

Tasty Other (Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, 2016)

A Door with a Voice (Agape Editions, 2016)

The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman (Wipf & Stock, 2013)

I Awake in My Womb (Yellow Flag Press, 2013)

Tea with Ezra (Boneset Books, 2013)

Selected publications

- “After an Older Man from Church Drunk-Texts to Tell Me I Looked Good Topless in His Dream Last Night.” Kahini Quarterly, January 31, 2021.

- “Carrying.” American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 120, No. 3, March 2020.

- “What Should Happen After a Tragedy.” TAB: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Vol. 8, 2020.

- “The Mirror Is Still Covered with Fog.” Pidgeonholes, Nov. 15, 2019.