Pulitzer-Prize winning poet to read at museum event

Claudia Emerson, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her work "Late Wife," will read from her works Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. at the Manassas Museum.

Emerson is one of eight distinguished women honored in the "Virginia Women in History: 2009" traveling exhibition, which will be displayed at the museum from Nov. 9 through Dec. 19.

The exhibition, mounted by The Library of Virginia and sponsored by SunTrust, honors women who have played an integral part in Virginia from its beginnings.

Emerson's "Late Wife" is a collection of personal, epistolary poems that chronicle the dissolution of a marriage, solitude and emotional healing, and discovery of a new life with a new husband whose first, beloved wife had died of cancer.

She has written three other volumes, "Pharaoh, Pharaoh," (1997); "Pinion: An Elegy" (2002) and "Figure Studies: Poems" (2008).

Emerson's poems have appeared in many literary journals and she is a contributing editor of the literary magazine "Shenandoah." She is currently the Poet Laureate of Virginia, a professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at the University of Mary Washington.

The other women honored in the exhibit include Mary Randolph, who wrote "The Virginia House-Wife" (1824), the first American regional cookbook; Caroline Bradby Cook, a resident of the Pamunkey Indian Reservation, who remained loyal to the United States during the Civil War; Virginia Estelle Randolph, the child of former slaves who completed her education at age 16 and began teaching; Pauline Forstall Colclough Adams, a formidable woman suffrage activist; Drew Gilpin Faust, one of the premier historians writing on the American South; Mary Sue Terry, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, who became the first woman elected to statewide office in the state; and Joanne Hess Grayson, who focused on issues of child abuse and neglect and family violence.

The author's presentation and the exhibition are included with admission. Her book is available for signing and purchase at Echoes, the museum store.