BOA fiction writer Douglas Watson on Wigleaf's best-of-year list!
Douglas Watson, the first-ever winner of BOA's annual Short Fiction Contest, recently had his short-short story "Life on the Moon" chosen by Wigleaf as one of the best of 2012! Each summer, Wigleaf chooses 50 outstanding short fictions -- uniquely all under 1,000 words -- for its "Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of the Year" list. As excitement builds for the spring 2013 release of Watson's BOA fiction collection, The Era of Not Quite, we couldn't be more thrilled for Watson and the spreading of his words into the world!
Here is the brilliant (very) short story, from Tin House:
"Life on the Moon" by Douglas Watson
Well, so there’s life on the moon. Little spiderlike things, they say—a marvelous discovery. Nine legs, not eight, but otherwise the classic spider look. Translucent whitish little buggers creeping about on the white-rock face of the moon. Who knew?
Already they have crawled into the vernacular, these “moon spiders.” Already, a week after the discovery, it is difficult to remember a time when, for us, there were no spiders—no life at all—upon the moon.
I may as well report (not that the thoughts of a lowly middle-school science teacher count for much) that I preferred the old, lifeless moon. Life has its corollary, after all. No longer may a troubled earthbound soul look out at the moon and think: There at least nothing dies.
But I suppose if I were on the moon and didn’t know any better, I would look at the earth and say to myself, There I wouldn’t be alone.
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