Andrew Hudgins
Photo courtesy of the author

The son of a West Point Academy graduate, Andrew Hudgins was raised on military bases, mostly in the South. He was educated at Huntingdon College and the University of Alabama, and he earned his M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1983. His poetry collections include Saints and Strangers (1985), which was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize; After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988); The Never-Ending (1991), a finalist for the National Book Award; The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood (1994); Babylon in a Jar (1998); and Ecstatic in the Poison (2003). He is also the author of a book of essays, The Glass Anvil (1997). In his poetry, Hudgins writes frankly and movingly about his relationship with his father and his childhood in the rural South. He addresses the soldier’s life in After the Lost War, a book-length narrative poem about the Civil War that won the Poets' Prize. Pat Conroy wrote of it: "How rare to see poetry with this kind of extraordinary narrative power! The book simply soars." Hudgins’s many honors include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hudgins is Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University.

On leave, I sat on marsh grass, watched bees tremble into new red blooms, and thought of how, a boy, I’d put my finger on the backs of bees. Engrossed, they didn’t notice me, and I careful, wouldn’t touch them long, a second or two, but long enough to feel the hard hum of their wings.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506