Ron Rash (born September 25, 1953) is an American poet, short story writer and novelist and the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University.[1]
Ron Rash holds the John and Dorothy Parris Professorship in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, where he teaches poetry and fiction in the Department of English.
Literary work
One Foot in Eden (2002) was Rash's first novel. It fleshes out the characters and themes of Raising the Dead (2002), tells the story of a community displaced, disguised as a murder mystery and imbued with Rash's poetic language.
His sophomore effort, Saints at the River (2004), covers a dispute in a South Carolina community torn over the issue of environmentalism.
Next was Serena (2008), which was also adapted into a feature film, too called Serena (2014), directed by Susanne Bier and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. The film was a critical and box office failure. In both, an ambitious wife of a North Carolina timber baron, Serena, brings the spirit of Lady MacBeth to depression-era North Carolina.
In The Cove (2012), the main family is afflicted with a series of grave misfortunes. Their lives, particularly Laurel's, are interrupted at the arrival of a mute stranger who has been found after suffering a severe number of wasp stings.
Serena was listed as #34 for Hardcover Fiction in the November 2, 2008 issue of The New York Times Book Review.[21]
The Cove was listed as #16 for Hardcover Fiction in the April 29, 2012 issue of The New York Times Book Review and remained on the list as #29, #22, and #31 for the three subsequent weeks.[22]
Nothing Gold Can Stay was listed as #28 for Hardcover Fiction in the March 10, 2013 issue of The New York Times Book Review.[23]
Thirteen short stories, eight of which were previously published in Casualties ("Chemistry," "Last Rite," "Not Waving But Drowning," "Overtime," "Cold Harbor", "Honesty", "Dangerous Love," "The Projectionist's Wife,"). Also includes the O. Henry Prize Winner "Speckled Trout" as well as "Pemberton's Bride," a story that gives a taste of Rash's forthcoming novel.
^Coby, Jim (2019). "'I ain't going to the jailhouse if I can help it': The Thriller Impulse in Ron Rash's One Foot in Eden". Clues: A Journal of Detection. 37 (1): 19–29.
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Rash, Ron (1994). The Night The New Jesus Fell to Earth and Other Stories from Cliffside, North Carolina. Columbia, SC: Bench Press. ISBN0-930769-11-2.
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Rash, Ron (2000). Casualties. Beaufort, SC: Bench Press. ISBN0-930769-14-7.
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Rash, Ron (2007). Chemistry and Other Stories. New York, NY: Picador. ISBN978-0-312-42508-1.