Ron Rash is the winner of The Sherwood Anderson Prize, Appalachian Book of the Year, Southern Book Critics Circle Award, O. Henry Prize, and the Pen/Faulkner Award. Rash will participate in a variety of programs throughout the year and during the week of the residency, September 26 - October 1, 2011.

Born in Chester, South Carolina, poet and fiction writer Ron Rash grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina, near Boiling Springs. Rash graduated from Gardner-Webb and Clemson universities, publishing his first collection of short stories in 1994, The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth. Rash has since published a number of award-winning books, including collections of poetry such as Eureka Mill (1998), Among the Believers (2000), and Raising the Dead (2002). His novels include One Foot in Eden (2002), Saints at the River (2004), The World Made Straight (2006), and Serena (2008). Rash's other story collections include Casualties (2000), Chemistry and Other Stories (2007), and his latest collection Burning Bright (2010). The quality and depth of Rash's work has placed him into a select group of American and Appalachian writers that includes Fred Chappell, Denise Giardina, Robert Morgan, and Lee Smith. His work is richly reflective of the cultural traditions of the region but laden and prescient with contemporary issues and ideas that also transcend the region. Among Rash's prestigious awards are The Sherwood Anderson Prize (1996), Appalachian Book of the Year for One Foot in Eden (2002), Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Saints at the River (2004), O. Henry Prize (2005), and Pen/Faulkner Finalist (2009) for Serena. Rash currently holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University and was most recently awarded The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize for "Burning Bright."

About the Program
The Appalachian Heritage Writer's Award and Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence Project were developed by the Department of English at Shepherd University in 1998 to celebrate and honor the work of a distinguished contemporary Appalachian writer. The literary residency was designed to function in concert with the Appalachian Heritage Festival, an annual celebration of Appalachian artistic and cultural traditions, sponsored by the Performing Arts Series at Shepherd (PASS).

To encourage aspiring West Virginia writers and to promote the kind of networking that fosters literary achievement, Shepherd University developed, in fall 2001, the West Virginia Fiction Competition. Fiction submissions from across the state of West Virginia are judged by a panel of teachers and writers, with final selection of the winning works of fiction made by the Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. The first-prize winner of the fiction competition will receive a cash prize of $500.

The Anthology of Appalachian Writers is a publication that encourages a long-established tradition of storytelling, love of language, and creative expression associated broadly with the area of the country known as Appalachia. Though the principal mission of the anthology is to provide a venue for publication of new writers, it also provides a collection of literature and scholarship that contributes to an understanding and appreciation for the region. Poetry, fiction, memoir, heritage writers, as well as new voices appear in each annual volume of the anthology.