September 2, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Novelist Brad Watson has joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of English faculty as a visiting associate professor.

Watson has worked as a newspaper reporter in Alabama and Florida and taught literature and creative writing at the University of Alabama. He is former director of creative writing at Harvard University and a former visiting writer-in-residence at the University of West Florida.

Watson’s novel The Heaven of Mercury (2002, W. W. Norton & Co.), which was a National Book Award finalist, was recently named as a co-winner of the Southern Book Award in Fiction from the Southern Book Critics Circle. The award will be presented October 11 at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville.

Watson’s other publications include a collection of short stories titled Last Days of the Dog-Men. The book was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.