Ronald Rash

Professor Western Carolina University

  • Cullowhee NC

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall.

Contact

Western Carolina University

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Biography

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise

Southern Writing
Poetry
English
Appalachia
Novelist

Accomplishments

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

2009

Finalist for the New York Times bestseller “Serena”

Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature

2020

Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies

PEN/Faulkner Award

2007

For “Chemistry and Other Stories”

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Education

Clemson University

M.A.

Gardner-Webb University

B.A.

Languages

  • English

Media Appearances

10 books that explore the brutal beauty of North Carolina's past and present

Sun Journal  online

2021-08-09

Though better known for his regional novels, this collection shows Rash, a professor in Appalachian cultural studies at Western Carolina University, to be a master of the short story form. These feral, heartbreaking tales evoke life in North Carolina’s rural mountain communities, stretching from the Civil War forward to the meth-blighted present.

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In new fiction from N.C. writer Ron Rash, life 'In the Valley' can be nasty, brutish and short

StarNews Online  online

2020-09-19

Ron Rash of Western Carolina University is known as the foremost practitioner of what critics call "Appalachian noir."

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English faculty Claxton, Railsback contribute essays for book about Ron Rash's work

WCU Stories  online

2019-02-26

Ron Rash, best-selling author, poet and Western Carolina University’s Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies, is the subject of a new collection of essays published by University of South Carolina Press.

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Event Appearances

Author Talk: Ron Rash

Lexington County Library  

2020-12-09