Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State alumnus and award-winning novelist and short story writer Brad Watson will deliver a public reading Tuesday [Aug. 25] at the university.

Free to all, Watson’s presentation begins at 3:30 p.m. in Colvard Student Union’s Fowlkes Auditorium. A public reception and book signing will follow.

Watson also will visit classes and interact with students during his campus visit.

Currently an associate professor of creative writing and literature at University of Wyoming, Watson is a native of Meridian who graduated from MSU in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in English. He also holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and literature from University of Alabama.

Watson is the author of “Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction. He also was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2011.

His first published work, a short story collection titled “Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories by Brad Watson,” received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997.

Another of Watson’s novels, “The Heaven of Mercury” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), received the 2003 Southern Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and was a 2002 National Book Award in Fiction finalist.

Prior to joining the University of Wyoming teaching staff in 2005, Watson held visiting writer-in-residence positions at the University of West Florida, University of Alabama, University of Mississippi and University of California, Irvine.

Additional information about Watson’s visit may be obtained from Michael Kardos, MSU associate professor of English, at 662-325-3644 and MKardos@english.msstate.edu.

Learn more about MSU’s English department at www.english.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s flagship research university, available online at www.msstate.edu.