Claudia Emerson (January 13, 1957 – December 4, 2014) was an American poet.

She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Late Wife, and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008.

Early life

Emerson was born on January 13, 1957 in Chatham, Virginia and graduated from Chatham Hall preparatory school in 1975. 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.

Career

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.

She 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 Governor Timothy M. Kaine. In 2008, she returned to Chatham Hall to serve as The Siragusa Foundation's Poet-in-Residence.

Emerson taught at several colleges including Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and Randolph-Macon College inAshland, 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.

Awards and honors

• The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Award, 1991
• Academy of American Poets Prize, 1991
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1994 (As Claudia Emerson Andrews)
• Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, 1995 and 2002
• University of Mary Washington Alumni Association Outstanding Young Faculty Award, 2003
• 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
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 2011
• Fellowship of Southern Writers, 2011 

Personal life

Emerson married musician Kent Ippolito in 2000. The couple lived in Richmond, Virginia and would perform and write songs together.

After missing most of the Fall 2014 semester while seeking cancer treatments, Claudia Emerson died on December 4, 2014, in Richmond, Virginia at the age of 57.

Bibliography

Books of poetry

• Pharaoh, Pharaoh, LSU Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8071-2159-7 (as Claudia Emerson Andrews)
• Pinion, An Elegy. LSU Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8071-2766-7.
• Late Wife: Poems. LSU Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-8071-3083-4.
• Figure Studies: Poems. LSU Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8071-3361-3.
• Secure the Shadow: Poems. LSU Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8071-4303-2.