Discipline: Literature – poetry

Andrew Hudgins

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: Columbus, OH
MacDowell Fellowships: 1986, 1997

Andrew Hudgins is an American poet and non-fiction author from Killeen, Texas. The eldest son in a military family, Hudgins moved around the American South for much of his childhood, eventually attending Huntingdon College and the University of Alabama. He earned his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1983. His poetry is known for its dark humor, formal control, and adept handling of voice. Hudgins’s first book, Saints and Strangers (1986), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; his third collection, The Never-Ending (1991), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Commended by critics for his striking ability to embody the Southern Gothic tradition of American literature, Hudgins’s early poems swell with sanguinary images of guilt, sacrifice, and powerlessness. Other early books such as After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988), a series of dramatic monologues recounting the life of Georgia poet and Confederate soldier Sidney Lanier, and The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood (1994) also use the conventions of Southern literary tradition to delve into the narrative potential of biography and autobiography. Hudgins’s collection of essays, The Glass Anvil (1997), explores childhood, memory, and personal poetics in prose. Typically a narrative poet whose dependence on persona and dramatic monologue extend into later collections such as Shut Up You’re Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children (2009), Hudgins has also attempted more lyrical modes in volumes like Ecstatic in the Poison: New Poems (2003). Hudgins’s many awards include the Hanes Poetry Prize and the Witter Bynner Award for Poetry. He has received fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He has taught at numerous institutions including Baylor University, the University of Cincinnati, and Ohio State University.

Studios

Star

Andrew Hudgins worked in the Star studio.

Funded by Alpha Chi Omega, a national fraternity founded in 1885, Star Studio — built in 1911–1912 — was the first studio given to the residency by an outside organization. To this day, Alpha Chi sorority pledges learn the story of Star Studio and its role in supporting American arts and letters. Beginning as a nicely proportioned…

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