John C. Mannone has poems in Artemis, TEACH.WRITE, Red Branch Review, Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He won the Emma Bell Miles Prize (2024) and Joy Margrave Award (2015, 2017) for creative nonfiction, as well as a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature. He has six chapbooks and five full-length collections; the latest, Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024), was a top-eight finalist for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award. He’s a professor of physics who loves to teach science, math, and creative writing whenever the opportunity arises. He’s the recently appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (2026-2028).