A. Loudermilk is the author of The Daughterliest Son, which won the Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Competition and was published in 2002. A winner of The Chas B. Wood Award for Distinguished Writing from Carolina Quarterly, the Phyllis Smart Young Prize in Poetry, as well as the Cream City Review Poetry Prize, he has published poetry in Tin House, The Louisville Review, The Mississippi Review, Margie, The Redneck Review, and other journals. His essays have been published Journal X, River Teeth, The Journal of Consumer Culture, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

“Like many first collections concerned with the broad categories body and place, Strange Valentine carries a sense of urgency: these poems had to be written. But unlike many urgent-feeling first books, the language in these poems is playful and interesting. A vernacular sensibility traces back to the locations the poems depict—trailer parks, bedrooms, hospital rooms, church—and there finds the sources of a fierce love. Common as its content and vocabulary may be, these poems are not merely plain-spoken narratives; they tell it straight and slant, they pucker, cuss, pause for a smoke, cut loose, then close down or open up. They come at you like a country song, layered with cockiness, longing, raw sweetness, heartache, and just plain heart. Unafraid to go over the top or to dig deep, they are honest without being too earnest.”—Julia Kasdorf, author of Eve’s Striptease

“A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine celebrates the tattered glamour of circus ‘freaks’ and trailer park matrons. Unforgettable narratives and tender lyrics weave pop culture and social history into a seamless and surprising vision. Loudermilk’s genius exploration of gender, class, and race is gutsy and gut wrenching. Strange Valentine is a haunting and important first book.”—Denise Duhamel, author of Queen for a Day: New and Selected Poems