Claudia Emerson, a professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, is Virginia's new poet laureate, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced today.

Emerson, who grew up in Chatham in Pittsylvania County, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for "Late Wife," her third book of poetry.

She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in English and earned a master's degree in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.