Ron Rash’s family has deep roots in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and most of his writing reflects his connection to the region. Rash grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, home to Gardner-Webb University, and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Gardner-Webb and Clemson universities, respectively.
Ron Rash’s family has deep roots in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and most of his writing reflects his connection to the region. Rash grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, home to Gardner-Webb University, and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Gardner-Webb and Clemson universities, respectively.
Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; five collections of poems; and seven collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, Nothing Gold Can Stay, a New York Times bestseller, Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award, and In the Valley. Three times the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, his books have been translated into seventeen languages.
Rash’s poetry and fiction have appeared in dozens of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Longman Anthology of Southern Literature, Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah, and Poetry. He has been honored with many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Poetry Fellowship, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, an O. Henry Award, and the James Still Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Rash currently holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.
Ron Rash photo © Ashley Jones, Clemson World Magazine