Ray McManus is an associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter. McManus is the author of four books of poetry: Punch, Red Dirt Jesus, Left Behind, and Driving through the Country before You Are Born (winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Award). His poetry and prose have appeared in Los Angeles Review, Arkansas Review, Texas Poetry Review, Hard Lines: An Anthology of Rough South Poetry, State of the Heart: South Carolina Writers on the Places They Love, Volume 2, and other journals and anthologies