[3] Her short fiction has been included in two volumes of the Best New Stories from the South anthology and honored with a Pushcart Prize.

The story follows the return of a successful native son to his home in North Carolina and his attempt to join the only family he ever wanted but never had.

As Watts describes it, "Imagine The Great Gatsby set in rural North Carolina, nine decades later, with desperate black people."

Watts was born and raised in Lenoir, North Carolina,[4] in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

[5] She lives with her husband and son in Pennsylvania where she is an associate professor of English at Lehigh University.