Donley Watt Papers

Writer Donley Watt was born in 1940, and he arrived in Athens in East Texas at the age of five. After graduating Athens High School, Watt attended Henderson County Junior College for one year then moved on to the University of Texas, where he received his Masters in History. In 1973, Watt helped found Austin Community College and was its dean for a few years. In his life, Watt has been a land man in the oil business, owned an herb farm, and owned a contemporary art gallery.  In 1987, Watt decided to go back to school to achieve his childhood dream and become a writer. In the early 1990s, Donley Watt lived, traveled, and researched in Mexico and Guatemala. For six years, Watt was the writer in residence at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.  e has also taught at Northern Arizona University and at the University of Arizona. Watt is the former vice-president of The Texas Institute of Letters. Currently he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Can You Get There From Here?, a collection of short stories, was published in September 1994, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ Stephen F. Turner Award for best first work of fiction. The Journey of Hector Rabinal (also published in 1994) was a finalist for a Western Writers of America Spur Award and translated in Spanish in 1995 by a publisher in Mexico City. Haley, Texas 1959, and 2 novellas followed in 1999. Watt then published Reynolds in 2002 and Dancing with Lyndon in 2004. He has also published numerous essays and reviews.