He teaches English and Creative Writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he oversees the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and is a member of the poetry faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

"[9] Manning's first collection, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2001 (under W. S.

[10] Dwight Garner, literary critic for The New York Times, said in a review of the book that "Manning displays not just terrific cunning but terrific aim--he nails his images the way a restless boy, up in a tree with a slingshot, nails anything sentient that wanders into view".

[13] His collection, One Man's Dark, was published in 2016 and focuses on rural America, and on living life in close contact with the natural world.

In 2020, Manning published Railsplitter, which envisions the role of poetry in the life of Abraham Lincoln.