11/21/2025
FALL 2025 IS OUT NOW!
This issue of the Sewanee Review features SALT OF THE EARTH, an unfinished novel by Brad Watson, and a craft essay by the author, along with several essays regarding his work and life.
The idea for this issue came from Justin Taylor, Director of the Sewanee School of Letters (), one of the quarterly’s regular contributors, and a first-rate writer and critic. Taylor, a longtime reader and fan of Watson’s fiction, ran into Alane Mason, Watson’s longtime editor at Norton, at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books (). Mason mentioned to Taylor that Watson was working on a novel at the time of his passing and that it was near enough to completion that its shape—the novel it could potentially become—was discernible. Where to find a home for it?
Luckily for the Review, and for American letters, Taylor broached the idea of this magazine publishing it. We’ve since had the pleasure of meeting Watson’s widow, Nell Hanley—to whom we are grateful beyond words not only for sharing her late husband’s work but also collaborating with us—as well as Watson’s literary agent and champion, Duvall Osteen. They generously and graciously agreed to let us proceed with the project.
It wasn’t difficult to subsequently secure a remarkable set of contributors to write about Watson the person and the artist, which in the essays often intermix, given how beloved and admired Watson was as a person, a writer, and a career teacher of creative writing.
These contributions—from Megan Mayhew Bergman, Nina de Gramont, Lindsay Lynch, Tony Earley, David Gessner, Caleb Johnson, and Michael Knight—are wide-ranging, comprising an ideal introduction to the breadth of this wonderful artist’s oeuvre and his impact on each of them as a writer, teacher, and friend. Justin Taylor also conducts an interview with Alane Mason and, like the essays, their conversation is as illuminating and generative for readers unfamiliar with Watson’s work as for those who are completists.
And if this issue brings more readers to Watson’s work, it has accomplished one of its tasks. —Adam Ross, Editor’s Note
