UA alumnus Brad Watson, now an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, has been selected as the recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year. Watson graduated from The University of Alabama with a master’s degree in fine arts.

“The honor of receiving the Harper Lee Award includes not only following the many great writers who’ve already received it, joining their ranks in that regard, but of course the association with Harper Lee herself, and her great novels,”
Watson told the Tuscaloosa News.

The award will be given to Watson at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville, AL on April 20 at the Coastal Alabama Community College, Tuscaloosa News reports.

Monroeville is historically significant in the literary world as the birthplace of Harper Lee and Truman Capote.

Watson is most known for “The Heaven of Mercury”, which was a 
finalist for the National Book Award and “Last Days of the Dog-Men”, which, according to Watson’s website, “helped him land a five-year appointment as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at 
Harvard University.”

Compiled by Mike Finnegan