Ray McManus’s poems and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His poems can be quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes quite dark, often both at the same time. His first book, Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born, was selected by Southern poet Kate Daniels and published by USC Press in 2007. Since then he has gone on to publish three more books: Left Behind (published by Stepping Stones Press in 2008), Red Dirt Jesus (selected by Alicia Ostriker for the Marick Press Poetry Prize and published by Marick Press in 2011), and Punch. (published by Hub City Press in 2014, and winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award). McManus also co-edited the anthology Found Anew with USC Press in 2015. His newest collection of poetry The Last Saturday in America was published in 2024 with Hub City Press.
McManus’s books center on the rural and sometimes repressive Southern culture of the Carolinas, and wrestle with the social norms of Southern masculinity, parenthood, and labor where the laughter, or worse silence, of others “is the threat that keeps us moving forward.” There are also repeated themes about the haunting presence of Ireland -- or more precisely, that unreal Ireland of the imagination that exists in family story and immigrant memory. McManus’s work teeters in the space between the narrative of hope and the heroics of failure, which he describes as the space he knows best by growing up working class in rural South Carolina.
Ray McManus earned his MFA in poetry and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of South Carolina. As a Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Sumter, McManus teaches creative writing, Irish literature, and Southern Literature, and has won many awards for teaching and service. At USC Sumter he is the Chair of the Division of Arts & Letters and the Division of Humanities & Social Sciences, and the former Director of Faculty, Curricula, and Courses for Dual Enrollment.
For over twenty years, McManus has served the community through local and statewide initiatives to bring poetry to citizens of all ages in South Carolina. He is the Writer in Residence at the Columbia Museum of Art where facilities literary arts programming and hosts the podcast Binder. in 2000, McManus founded Split P Soup, a creative writing outreach program that places writers in schools and communities in South Carolina. He served 18 years as the director of the creative writing program at the Tri-District Arts Consortium. He has also served two terms on the Board of Governors for the South Carolina Academy of Authors (the last term as chair). His current outreach project is Re:Verse, a teaching initiative that works with teachers and administrators on developing effective strategies for bringing creative writing back to standard education. In 2023, Ray McManus received the Governor's Award for the Arts -- the highest award bestowed in the arts in South Carolina.
McManus lives in South Carolina with his wife, their three children, and their grandson. Below is a picture of goats. Unrelated.
McManus’s books center on the rural and sometimes repressive Southern culture of the Carolinas, and wrestle with the social norms of Southern masculinity, parenthood, and labor where the laughter, or worse silence, of others “is the threat that keeps us moving forward.” There are also repeated themes about the haunting presence of Ireland -- or more precisely, that unreal Ireland of the imagination that exists in family story and immigrant memory. McManus’s work teeters in the space between the narrative of hope and the heroics of failure, which he describes as the space he knows best by growing up working class in rural South Carolina.
Ray McManus earned his MFA in poetry and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of South Carolina. As a Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Sumter, McManus teaches creative writing, Irish literature, and Southern Literature, and has won many awards for teaching and service. At USC Sumter he is the Chair of the Division of Arts & Letters and the Division of Humanities & Social Sciences, and the former Director of Faculty, Curricula, and Courses for Dual Enrollment.
For over twenty years, McManus has served the community through local and statewide initiatives to bring poetry to citizens of all ages in South Carolina. He is the Writer in Residence at the Columbia Museum of Art where facilities literary arts programming and hosts the podcast Binder. in 2000, McManus founded Split P Soup, a creative writing outreach program that places writers in schools and communities in South Carolina. He served 18 years as the director of the creative writing program at the Tri-District Arts Consortium. He has also served two terms on the Board of Governors for the South Carolina Academy of Authors (the last term as chair). His current outreach project is Re:Verse, a teaching initiative that works with teachers and administrators on developing effective strategies for bringing creative writing back to standard education. In 2023, Ray McManus received the Governor's Award for the Arts -- the highest award bestowed in the arts in South Carolina.
McManus lives in South Carolina with his wife, their three children, and their grandson. Below is a picture of goats. Unrelated.
