UW to Host Event Honoring Late Creative Writing Professor Brad Watson Oct. 23

The University of Wyoming will host an event titled "There is Happiness: Celebrating the Life of Brad Watson" Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 5 p.m. in Room 506 of Coe Library.

The event, which honors late UW creative writing Professor Brad Watson, is co-sponsored by UW Libraries, the Department of English, the Creative Writing Program and the Honors College. The event will feature Watson's former students Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Caleb Johnson and Jenny Tinghui Zhang, as well as his friend, Joy Williams, who will read from Watson's book "There Is Happiness," a posthumous collection of new and selected stories, published in July.

An accomplished writer, esteemed professor and encouraging mentor, Watson began his career at UW in 2005 as a professor in the Master of Fine Arts Program in the Department of English. Described as a thoughtful, inspired teacher, he was known for his mentorship.

His fiction and essays were published in The New Yorker, Oxford American, Granta, Ecotone, Electric Literature and The Idaho Review, among others. He received numerous awards, including the prestigious Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of the Year in 2017, presented to a living, nationally recognized Alabama writer.

"It was, I believe, the short story in which he delighted and at which he excelled," Williams says.

Moderated by Alyson Hagy, a UW professor of English and creative writing, a question-and-answer session will follow the readings.

"We are so honored to be able to celebrate Brad's outstanding work as a writer in this way," Hagy says. "Having his great friend, Joy Williams, and three of his former students read from his final work will be very powerful."

Watson's students, as well as Williams, have published a variety of successful works.

Fajardo-Anstine is the national bestselling author of the novel "Woman of Light" and acclaimed short story collection "Sabrina & Corina," a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of an American Book Award. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Fajardo-Anstine is the 2022-24 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. From Denver, Colo., she holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from UW.

Johnson is the author of the novel, "Treeborne," which received an honorable mention for the Southern Book Prize. His nonfiction has been cited in The Best American Essays and appears in Garden & Gun, Southern Living, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. He studied journalism at the University of Alabama and earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from UW.

He has received fellowships from the Longleaf Writers Conference, the Jentel Foundation and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Currently, he teaches creative writing at the University of South Alabama.

Tinghui Zhang is the author of the international bestselling novel "Four Treasures of the Sky," which has been translated into 12 languages and named a New York Times Notable Book, a Good Morning America Book Club Buzz Pick and an Idaho Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in The Cut, The New York Times, Texas Highways and The Rumpus, among others.

She is a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" honoree and has received support from Kundiman, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Tin House and UW, where she completed her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Her second novel, "Superfan," is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.

Williams is the author of five novels, including "The Quick and the Dead" and, most recently, "Harrow"; and five collections of stories, including "Ninety-Nine Stories of God," as well as "Ill Nature," a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, The Paris Review's Hadada Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which she was elected in 2008. She lives in Arizona and Wyoming.

Copies of Watson's "There Is Happiness," in addition to the featured speakers' books, will be available for sale by the University Store after the event.

The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be available.

Those who are not able to attend in person will have the option to attend online via Wyocast here.

For more information about the event, email Hagy at [email protected].