After a quarter century at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Larry Watson has retired as a professor of English.

He has taught writing and literature at the UWSP since 1978. In addition, his sixth novel will be published by Random House in August.

After retirement, Watson will take a position as a visiting professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he will teach creative writing and other upper-level courses. He said he will miss his colleagues and students he has come to know at UWSP, but is looking forward to the challenge of teaching at another university. "And, don�t forget Marquette�s Division I basketball team," he adds, "what more do I have to say."

A native of North Dakota, Watson is the author of the novels, "In A Dark Time," "Montana 1948," "Justice," "White Crosses" and "Laura" and the chapbook of poetry, "Leaving Dakota." Filmmaker Echo Lake Productions has purchased the movie rights to "Montana 1948" and a British producer has optioned the rights to "White Crosses." He has published short stories and poems in literary journals, quarterlies and anthologies. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other periodicals.

His fiction has been published in more than ten foreign editions and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, the New York Public Library and Critics� Choice. He has taught and discussed writing at conferences in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin and St. Malo, France. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Watson said he enjoys teaching, but with a lighter teaching load than at UWSP, he expects to have more time for writing to fulfill a two-book contract with Random House. His book, "Orchard," set in Wisconsin, will be available August 20 at bookstores nationwide. The price is $24.95 for the hardcover volume. The next novel will return to Montana, this time in the 1960s in a different community than in his former books.

In a review of "Orchard," Publishers Weekly said "Watson surpasses himself in his sixth novel, an uncompromising, perfectly calibrated portrait of two couples in rural Wisconsin in the 1950s." The story follows the entangled lives of a young orchard keeper and his wife, who are grieving the death of their young son, and a famous artist and his adoring wife. When the younger man discovers that his wife is posing nude for the artist, he plots revenge.

"Sentences and chapters unfurl with a sense of inevitability, and the narrative possesses an uncommon integrity," Publishers Weekly said. "Watson has won his share of literary laurels, but his latest novel could be a contender for one of the major prizes."

Several cities have chosen Watson�s previous novels for citywide reading programs. Watson has been interviewed for several discussion groups that result from these programs. Wahpeton, N.D., chose "White Crosses" and several other communities have chosen to read "Montana 1948."

"Of course, the people I talk to know the book better than I do because they�ve just finished reading it and I haven�t looked at it in a while," Watson said. "They will correct me if I make a misstatement or remember an incident from the wrong novel."

After finishing a novel and sending it to the publisher, Watson said it feels like the rest of the process is happening to someone else. "I�m not writing it any more and I�ve moved on to the rest of my life, teaching and writing the next book. The after-publication stuff is a strange situation for me."

Watson said that he is most comfortable when writing about past decades. "I�m moving closer to the present, one decade at a time," he said. And he is uncomfortable when writing about the place where he currently lives. He found it impossible to write about North Dakota until he had left there, and now that he is leaving Stevens Point, he wonders if it might now be the setting for a future story or novel.

Watson and his wife, Susan, have two daughters, Amy, who lives in Milwaukee and works at UW-Milwaukee, and Elly, who lives in Appleton. They also have two grandchildren. Both daughters are graduates of Stevens Point Area High School and Amy is a graduate of UWSP.

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