Kelly Cherry named Va. poet laureate

Gov. Bob McDonnell has named Kelly Cherry as Virginia's new poet laureate.

Cherry succeeds University of Mary Washington professor Claudia Emerson, who had served in the honorary two-year state post since 2008.

Cherry is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington and a resident of Halifax.

According to her Web site, she is the author of 19 fiction and nonfiction books, eight chapbooks and two translations of classical plays. Another book of poems is scheduled to be released in 2013.

She is the first recipient of the Fellowship of Southern Writers' Hanes Poetry Prize. Her other awards include three PEN/Syndicated Fiction Awards and the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for the best volume of short stories published in 1999.