About
CAConrad was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1966. As a child, they sold bouquets of carnations and roses along the highway to help their family survive, and this is where they wrote their first poems in 1975. As a younger poet, they lived in Philadelphia, where they lost many loved ones during the early years of the AIDS crisis. The center of the Philadelphia poetry community at the time was Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, Essex Hemphill, and Gil Ott. Some of CA's other influences include Emily Dickinson, Bernadette Mayer, Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, Will Alexander, and Alice Notley.
In 2005, they began working with (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin, 2024). The poems of this book recall the historical and symbolic significance of the boomerang as an instrument of return. These poems emerged from a (Soma)tic poetry ritual in which the author wrote with animals who have found ways to thrive in the Anthropocene, resulting in sculptural poems that are uninhibited and mysterious as they emerge organically from the bottom of each page. Guided by the urge "to/desire/the world/as it is/not as/it was," CAConrad writes from an ecopoetics that is generous and galvanizing, reminding us of how our present attentions collectively shape a future humanity.
The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010) is now available in nine different languages, with recent editions in French (P.O.L Press, 2025) and Italian (Garganta Press, 2025). They are the author of many other books, which include You Don't Have What It Takes to Be My Nemesis (Penguin UK, 2023), AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021), While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (Wave Books, 2012) and others. Along with Robert Dewhurst and Joshua Beckman, CA coedited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books, 2015).
They also exhibit their poems as art objects in places such as CHAMP LACOMBE Gallery in London, MOCA-Tucson, Fluent Gallery in Santander, Futura Gallery in Prague, the Robert Grunenberg Gallery in Berlin, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City, Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, Swarf Gallery in Melbourne, Batalha Centro de Cinema in Porto, and other museums and exhibition spaces. The poems are often wooden sculptures standing from 6 to 9 feet tall, while other times they are printed on chiffon and hung for display, and they are also sometimes printed directly onto walls.
They received the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Book Award. Their play, The Obituary Show, was made into a film in 2022 by Augusto Cascales. They teach at Sandberg Art Institute and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. They write and live in Greenfield, Massachusetts.