Andrew Hudgins was born in Killeen, Texas, as part of a military family. That entailed relocating through the South repeatedly while he was growing up. Some of that comes through in his verse autobiography The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood (1994). His essay collection The Glass Anvil (1997) takes up both his personal poetics and the complexities of childhood memory. Hudgins was educated at Huntingdon College, the University of Alabama, and the University of Iowa. He teaches at Ohio State University.  Among his most celebrated works is After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988), a series of dramatic monologues supposedly in the voice of Georgia poet and Confederate soldier Sidney Lanier.