In radio interview, English professor discusses locations in literature

Radford University Associate Professor of English Courtney Watson, Ph.D., is a scholar in literary travel and tourism.

More precisely, she has traveled throughout the southern United States and various locations around the world to examine the legacies of well-known authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright and William Faulkner. Her travels have taken her as far away as Iceland, Spain, and France to see the places they lived, wrote, and set their stories.

Trekking to those locations can offer “next-level, you-are-there-experiences for dedicated readers,” Watson said. And “it was a lot of fun.”

Her research focuses on how “legacies of authors are marketed through commodified literary landmarks in heritage economies,” said Watson, who teaches composition and literature at Radford University Carilion. She also explores travel themes in her own creative work, which has won her a National Society of Arts & Letters Regional Short Story Prize and the Omega Sci-Fi “Women Hold Up Half the Sky” award for feminist science fiction.

Watson spoke about her research and travels during a recorded interview on the “With Good Reason” public radio program, which will air July 22-28, 2022, on more than 60 radio stations across the United States.

Listeners in the New River Valley can hear the program at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, on Public Radio WVRU 89.9. The show is also available as a podcast at withgoodreason.org.

The “With Good Reason” radio program is produced by Virginia Humanities for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium, which comprises all of Virginia’s public colleges and universities.

The award-winning program is heard by an estimated 100,000 people each week on public radio stations in 33 states, including Virginia and Washington, D.C. Thousands more download the episodes via iTunes.