Watson said he could not pass up the chance to come to Harvard.

"It is one of the more attractive jobs in the country," he said. "It gives you an opportunity to work with undergrads, to teach writing exclusively," said Watson.

In particular he cited the chance to work with other Harvard creative writers and the reduced teaching load as reasons for his interest in the job.

Emily Davidson, a sophomore at the University of Alabama who has taken all of her English courses from Watson, said he introduced her to a variety of short story writers and was "immensely" helpful as a writing teacher.

"He is a super super super guy," she said. "I had a meeting with him this afternoon and he told me to write a novel just for fun. That's the type of guy he is."

Watson received a bachelor's in English from Mississippi State University and a masters of fine arts from the University of Alabama.

Watson has written a book of short stories, "Last of the DogMen," which won the Sue Kaufman prize for first fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Watson said the book, which is unified by the theme of dogs, centers on the "idea that there is gray area in human beings between the wild and the civilized."

Jenkins called Watson's short story "Seeing Eye"--written through the perspective of a guide dog waiting to cross a street--"wonderfully beguiling."

"The dog stands in for the missing organ of perception, the eye," he said. "The dog has become the means by which this human perceives the world--and conversely in this story the dog also seems to have acquired a kind of human consciousness. It is like the dog has become part human and the human has become part animal.