"Kip," of course, means "dweller at the pointy top of the hill" in Old English. It's also the Dutch word for duck; the smallest unit of Thai currency; a gymanstics maneuver; a tanned cowhide, or bundle of same, as well as a method of drying and preserving fish; shorthand notation for one thousand pounds of pressure; and a place to crash, as well as the act of crashing, for the night.

"Manley" is of either Irish or English extraction. In either case, it means "the lee of Man"--though, on the one hand, it's the lee, or side protected from wind and weather, of the Isle of Man, and, on the other, it's a lea, or meadow, somewhere not far from Manchester.

But Kip Manley--far from dwelling on a pointy hill somewhere near a Mancunian meadow--was born in Sheffield, Alabama, in the ninth month of 1968. Currently residing in Portland, Oregon (after stints in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, both Carolinas, Illinois, Arak [Iran], Puerto Ordaz [Venezuela], Boston, and the Pioneer Valley), he ekes out a meagre living as a writer, designer, and cognoscente of marginalized eclectica, with the invaluable companionship of Jenn Manley Lee, Taran Jack, and the best two cats in all the world.