About the Author

Brad Watson (1955–2020) was the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Heaven of Mercury and Miss Jane, and two collections of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. His work has been recognized by the short list and long list of the National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Great Lakes New Writers Award, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction (twice), the Southern Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, a National Endowment of the Arts Grant in Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harper Lee Award, and the Award in Letters granted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He taught creative writing at Harvard University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Wyoming, Laramie.

Reviews

"His people and dogs - those wonderful dogs! - come alive with honest, thrumming energy."
*New York Times Book Review*

"A sad, beautiful meditation on love, loss, and dogs...Watson's best writing is full of an unusual sort of lugubrious humor and depth."
*Los Angeles Times*

"Elegant and elegiac, beautifully pitched to the human ear, yet resoundingly felt in our animal hearts."
*New York Newsday*

"The dogs are not pets so much as fully realized characters, the equals – sometimes the betters – of the men and women stirring up today’s Deep South. Watson writes with surprising emotional force."
*Amy Hempl - Elle*

"Brad Watson's prose is exciting, suburb. Not a dull story here. Dogs? Well, often they're more interesting than their masters, certainly more abiding. Watson's people are the wretched dreams of honorable dogs. I read these pieces with great pleasure."
*Barry Hannah, author of Airships*

"Crisp as a morning in deer season, rife with spirited good humor and high intelligence."
*Pinckney Benedict, author of Dogs of God*

"Strong and true to the place they come from."
*Fred Chappell, author of Dagon*

"Brad Watson is a writer still mystified by his own immense talent. How could he not be? He writes sentences you wait a lifetime for. Tells stories you’ve never heard. Last Days of the Dog-Men is the best I’ve read in ages. Mercy for none, but salvation for all."
*Robert Olmestead, author of The Coldest Night*

"The very nature of Last Days of the Dog-Men - a gathering of 'dog' tales that exploits both the loyal and the feral nature of man's best friend - reflects Brad Watson's comically dark and deceptively wry vision in a prose as accurate as it is lovely."
*Allen Wier, author of Blanco*

"Brad Watson's stories are wholly original - humorous and heartbreaking: there is a compassion for both humans and dogs and the world as they know it that reduces the focus of life's bare minimums: food, shelter, and companionship. Last Days of the Dog-Men is a powerful debut by a master storyteller."
*Jill McCorkle, author of Old Crimes*

"Stunning...superb...Should become essential to the canon."
*Commercial Appeal*

"[This work ushers Watson into] a distinguished [Southern] literary heritage, from Faulkner to Larry Brown to Barry Hannah to Richard Ford."
*The State*

"Bracing prose, heralding the arrival of a new talent on the literary scene."
*Tuscaloosa News*

"Watson is a writer keenly aware of the duality of canine nature - the familiar, loving, always accepting domesticate, and the feral, wandering, howling wild animal...Extraordinary."
*Clarion Ledger*