Cause of death Colon cancer Role Poet Name Claudia Emerson | Occupation Poet, professor Nationality American | |
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Alma mater University of VirginiaUniversity of North Carolina at Greensboro Spouse Kent Ippolito (m. 2000–2014) Books Late Wife, The Opposite House: P, Secure the Shadow: Poems, Figure studies, Pinion | ||
Claudia emerson 2011 national book festival
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 then-Governor Tim Kaine in 2008.
Contents
- Claudia emerson 2011 national book festival
- Claudia emerson poetry reading sewanee writers conference
- Early life
- Career
- Awards and honors
- Personal life
- References
Claudia emerson poetry reading sewanee writers conference
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 published five poetry collections through Louisiana State University Press: Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997), Pinion: An Elegy (2002), Late Wife (2005), Figure Studies: Poems (2008), and Secure the Shadow (2012).
Two collections were published posthumously, "The Opposite House" (March 2015) and "Impossible Bottle" (September 2015).
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 Timothy M. 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.
Awards and honors
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.