Brad Watson

Brad Watson (1955-2020) was a writer and professor at The University of Wyoming in the creative writing program. His four books include the short story collections Last Days of the Dog-Men and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, and the novels The Heaven of Mercury and Miss Jane, all from W.W. Norton & Co. His work received two awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NEA grant, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Harper Lee Award.

Dog-Men received the Sue Kaufmann Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (AAAL). Aliens was a finalist for the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction and earned a 2013 Award in Letters from the AAAL. Mercury received the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction (as did Aliens), and was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award. Miss Jane was a long-list finalist for the 2016 National Book Award in Fiction and the International DUBLIN Literary Award. He lived with his wife Nell Hanley and their dogs and horses on the high plains south of Laramie, Wyoming.