Ron Rash

Ron Rash is the author of ten books including his forthcoming novel The Cove (Canongate, March 2012; US, Ecco, April 2012).

In 2010 Rash won the Frank O'Connor award for his short story collection Burning Bright . The award is the foremost prize for a short story collection in the world and celebrates great writers of the form. Previous recipients include Yiyun Li, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Haruki Murakami. In 1994, Rash was awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship, and he won the Sherwood Anderson Prize in 1996. In 2001, he won the Novella Festival Novel Award, and in 2002 the Foreword Magazine’s Gold Medal in Literary Fiction for One Foot in Eden. The novel was also named Appalachian Book of the Year. His second novel, Saints at the River, was named Fiction Book of the Year by both the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association. In 2005 Rash won an O. Henry award for his story “Speckled Trout” and received the James Still Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Rash's family has lived in the southern Appalachian Mountains since the mid-1700's, and it is this region that is the primary focus of his writing. Rash holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.

Photograph: Jeff Daniel Marion