Ron Rash
Ron Rash is the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University and the author of six novels (most recently Above the Waterfall), four other collections of short stories, and four collections of poetry. Rash is the winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the James Still Award of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Weatherford Award for Best Novel, and the Fiction Book of the Year Award of the Southern Book Critics Circle. He is a two-time finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize and twice winner of the O. Henry Prize.