Virginia Poet Laureate to Read Work During Special Event

LYNCHBURG–Randolph College will feature Claudia Emerson and her work Nov. 11. The free event is scheduled for 8 p.m. in the Alice Ashley Jack Room in Smith Memorial Building.

Emerson’s reading is the last in the college’s Visiting Writers Series for the fall semester. The reading is open to the public.

Emerson, a former professor of English at the college, is the author of collections Pharaoh, Pharaoh, and Pinion: An Elegy. <

Her poems have appeared in journals Poetry, TriQuartlery, and New England Review among others. She is the recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her 2005 book, Late Wife: Poems (LSU Press), awarded her the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her second book, Figure Studies (LSU Press) was published in 2008.

Emerson, now professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Mary Washington University in Fredricksburg, Virginia, was appointed Poet Laureate of Virginia in May.