Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He earned his BA from Arizona State University and MFA from Butler University. His debut poetry collection, Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017), won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry. Manuel’s poems explore identity, race, and masculinity. Grounded in autobiography, his first book tracks a speaker struggling between worlds. In an interview with Sofia Bosch, Manuel remarks, “I think the two biggest catalysts of Testify would be my mom’s death when I was 8 and my father’s long prison sentence. I was raised by my auntie … so, I was always kind of straddling those two worlds. I was always told when I was in the black space … I wasn’t black enough and then when I was at school, suddenly, I was too black—I always felt out of place.”

Manuel has served as poetry editor for Gold Line Press and as managing editor of Ricochet Editions. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Southern California, where he is a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow.