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Biography
American

Ron Rash

1953

Ron Rash is an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet whose fiction is set in the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina and who is widely regarded as the finest living writer of the American South's mountain region. Serena (2008) — a historical novel about a ruthlessly ambitious woman in Depression-era North Carolina — established him as a major American novelist. His short stories, collected in volumes like Burning Bright (2010) and Something Rich and Strange (2014), are among the finest being written in America.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Ron Rash (b. 25 September 1953) was born in Chester, South Carolina, and grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. He teaches at Western Carolina University. His family has lived in the southern Appalachian mountains for over two hundred years, and his fiction draws deeply on this heritage.

Life and Career

Rash published poetry and short fiction before his first novel, One Foot in Eden (2002) — a murder mystery set in a South Carolina community about to be flooded by a dam. Saints at the River (2004) addresses environmental conflict. Serena (2008) — about Serena Pemberton, a timber baroness of Lady Macbeth-like ambition in 1930s North Carolina — was a bestseller and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

His short stories are his finest work. Collections like Burning Bright (2010), Nothing Gold Can Stay (2013), and Something Rich and Strange (2014) — set among the rural poor of Appalachia — are spare, devastating, and suffused with the landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Major Works and Themes

Rash writes about the people and landscape of Appalachia — about poverty, environmental destruction, the methamphetamine epidemic, and the persistence of beauty in a region that has been exploited by outsiders for its timber, minerals, and labour. His prose is precise and lyrical, rooted in the rhythms of mountain speech.

Key Works

  • Serena (2008) — PEN/Faulkner finalist
  • Burning Bright (2010) — Frank O’Connor Award
  • Above the Waterfall (2015)
  • In the Valley (2020)

Collecting Rash

One Foot in Eden (2002, Henry Holt) — the debut novel — brings $30–$80. Serena (2008, Ecco/HarperCollins) brings $20–$50. Rash signs at Southern literary festivals and university events.