Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson (January 13, 1957 – December 4, 2014) and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008. She received her BA in English from the University of Virginia in 1979 and her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1991. Virginia Poets Laureate at University of Mary Washington Reunion Day, June 3, 2011. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda (2006–2008), Claudia Emerson (2008–2010), and Kelly Cherry (2010–2012)

Career Emerson published eight poetry collections through Louisiana State University Press's Southern Messenger Poets series: Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997), Pinion: An Elegy (2002), Late Wife (2005), Figure Studies: Poems (2008), Secure the Shadow (2012), The Opposite House (2015), Impossible Bottle (2015), and Claude Before Time and Space (2018).

In addition to her collections, Emerson's work has been included in such anthologies as Yellow Shoe Poets, The Made Thing, Strongly Spent: 50 Years of Shenandoah Poetry, and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia.

Emerson served as poetry editor for the Greensboro Review and a contributing editor for the literary magazine Shenandoah. In 2002, Emerson was Guest Editor of Visions-International (published by Black Buzzard Press). On August 26, 2008, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Virginia, by then Governor Tim Kaine and served until 2010. In 2008, she returned to Chatham Hall to serve as The Siragusa Foundation's Poet-in-Residence.

She taught at several colleges including Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. She spent over a decade at the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as an English professor and the Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry.

In 2013, Emerson joined the creative writing faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where she taught until her death in 2014 from colon cancer at age 57.

Personal life Emerson married musician Kent Ippolito in 2000. The couple lived in Richmond, Virginia, and performed and wrote songs together. After missing most of the Fall 2014 semester while seeking cancer treatments, Claudia Emerson died on December 4, 2014, in Richmond at the age of 57 from complications associated with colon cancer. Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, 1995 and 2002 Witter Bynner Fellowship from Library of Congress, 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2006 Poet Laureate of Virginia, 2008–2010 Library of Virginia, Virginia Women in History, 2009 Fellowship of Southern Writers, Inaugural Winner, Donald Justice Award for Poetry, 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2011 Elected to Membership, Fellowship of Southern Writers, 2011