Born on January 1, 1966, CAConrad describes himself as “the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.”
He is the author of numerous collections of poetry includingDeviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006); Advanced Elvis Course (2009); The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009), recipient of the Gil Ott Book Award, reprinted by Wave Books in 2010; The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010), with the poet Frank Sherlock; and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon(Wave Books, 2012).
The poet Eileen Myles writes that "[Conrad] always argues (from the inside of his poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. His kind of queerness strikes me as nonpolarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of his exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence.”
CAConrad’s awards include a PEW Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Currently, he lives in Philadelphia.
From Conrad's "The Book of Frank"