Andrew Hudgins was born in 1951. He is the author of five books of poetry and one book of essays. He has received many awards for his poetry, including the Ohioana Award for lifetime contributions to poetry in Ohio. As a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, he received the Taft Distinguished Faculty Award. As a child, he loved to read because it allowed him to escape to a world that was much larger, happier, and more exciting than the world he was living in. As he read though, he "couldn't help but notice that the books never seemed to include a child's anger, a child's rage at his own powerlessness and incomprehension." He vowed that if he ever wrote about his own childhood, he'd try to show that rage. This is what he tries to do in his book of poems The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood, from which "Childhood of the Ancients" is taken.