Alexandra Watson
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English, First Year Foundation
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Alexandra Watson is a multiracial fiction writer, poet, editor and educator from Syracuse, New York. She’s a co-founder and the executive editor of Apogee Journal, a nonprofit literary arts organization that uplifts writers from the political margins, prioritizing writers and artists of color. Apogee won the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, and for her editorial work, Alexandra received the 2019 PEN/Nora Magid Prize for Literary Magazine editing and the 2023 Platinum Review Award for magazine editing from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.
Since its founding in 2012, Apogee has featured contributors including David Mura, Danez Smith, Morgan Parker, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Deesha Philyaw, K Ming Chang, Dantiel W. Moniz, Mickalene Thomas, Naomi Jackson, Roger Reeves, and many more. Apogee has hosted free or low cost community arts workshops supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Brooklyn Arts Council, and is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Alexandra's poetry and fiction have appeared in The Nation, The South Carolina Review, The Rumpus, Bennington Review, The Common, Nat. Brut., The Offing, Redivider, Yes Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. Her short story “Even Days” won the Ronald Moran fiction prize from the South Carolina Review. Her work is concerned with exploring the intersections of race, class, gender, mental illness, addiction, and family.
She’s a Senior Lecturer at Barnard College, where she founded the Creative Writing Fellows program and the Cite Black Barnard Faculty initiative. She has been the recipient of three Provost grants for Innovation in Teaching, including the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion grant. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and a BA in English and Literary Arts from Brown University. She lives in the Hudson Valley and commutes to Barnard on the Metro-North.
- M.F.A., Columbia University
- B.A., Brown University
- Creative Writing
- Inclusive Pedagogy
- Contemporary American Literature
- Literary Nonprofits
- Literary Magazine Editing
- Barnard Provost’s Fund for Innovative Teaching (2020)
- Columbia Provost’s Innovative Course Design (2020)
- 2019 PEN/Nora Magid Prize for Literary Magazine editing
- Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Scholarship, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, 2014
- Mariposa Fellowship, Columbia School of the Arts, 2012-2013
- Recipient of Open Meadows Foundation grant for women-led activist projects
- Recipient of New York State Council on the Arts grants
- Recipient of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grants
- Executive Editor, Apogee Journal Assistant
- Director of Writing Instruction, Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America
- Poem, Brother Leaves Voicemails from CPEP, The Nation, 2022 (forthcoming)
- Poem, Self Portrait as an A Train Car, Painted Bride Quarterly, 2022 (forthcoming)
- Story, "Even Days, South Carolina Review, 2022 (winner of Ronald Moran fiction prize)
- Story, “Greener,” The Rumpus, 2021
- Poems, “My Body as the George Washington Bridge,” “when the party’s over” The Common, 2021
- Poem, “Sugar Daddies,” The Swamp Literary Magazine, 2020
- Poem, “Night Shades or, People Unraced,” The Bennington Review, 2020
- Poems, “Ode to a deep hip stretch,” “they got the boys who got your girls,” Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, 2020
- Poem, “Yelp Reviews for a Lost Corner,” Scoundrel Time, 2020
- Poem, “Faded,” Yes Poetry, 2020
- Poem, “After Hours Elsewhere,” Breadcrumbs Magazine, 2020
- Poem, “First Woman Creates Second Woman,” Breadcrumbs Magazine (2019)
- Story, “Not The Type,” Nat. Brut. (2017)
- Poem, “Alien Relative,” PANK. (2017)
- Poem, “Dream Machine,” Redivider (2017)
Maya Angelou wrote, “Words are things… Someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words.” I like to think of First Year Writing as our collaborative attempt to “measure the power of words”--by dissecting other writers’ work and crafting our own arguments. As an editor and fiction and poetry writer, I’m especially interested in discussing issues of voice, perspective, narrative, silence. The roles of sound and form in creating meaning. The role of the writer’s audience--imagined, ideal, and real.
Questions of voice, perspective, and audience resonate through the texts in the Americas curriculum. Who gets to speak, who gets to record, who gets to document (literary) history? Who’s listening? What does it look/sound like when marginal voices participate in the literary conversation? What happens when oral and literary traditions collide / intersect / grapple? How does the subject describe its other--colonized or colonizer? Our texts--from Sor Juana’s Loa to the Divine Narcissus to Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno to Toni Morrison’s Jazz--show the complexity of these questions.
Through writing, we attempt to answer these complex questions. The deepest insights come when we maintain our sense of curiosity, our belief that the act of writing leads to discovery, helps answer our burning questions. Writing helps us not only to transcribe existing ideas but also to generate new ideas, to allow encounters with new evidence to challenge our assumptions.
I joined Barnard’s faculty as a Lecturer in First Year Writing in 2017, and I share my students’ enthusiasm about participating in such a dynamic, engaging intellectual environment. I previously taught University Writing at Columbia, and college writing at the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America. I have an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia. While in grad school I helped found a literary magazine, Apogee Journal, which I still edit today.
In The News
As the world attempts to move beyond the pandemic, Barnard revisits a poetry series that has helped our community thrive during trying times.
Read about the new accomplishments of Barnard scholars.