Ron Rash

Art Form: Poetry/Fiction Writing

Cullowhee, NC

Email: ronrash@email.wcu.edu
Web Site: http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/33503/Ron_Rash/index.aspx

 

About Ron Rash

Burning Bright is the fourth short story collection from Boiling Springs native Ron Rash, author of the 2009 New York Times notable book of the year Serena, which has been published in six languages.

Rash is the author of three other novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River and The World Made Straight; three poetry collections; and three other collections of short stories. He earned the 1996 Sherwood Anderson Grant, was recipient of the 2005 O. Henry Prize for the story Speckled Trout, was a 2008 PEN/Faulkner finalist for the collection Chemistry and Other Stories and a 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist for Serena. He is currently Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

Rash says the title story of Burning Bright is one of his favorites, as well as a "quieter" story called The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars. Writing a novel is a three-year undertaking for him, so he will sometimes write a short story between drafts. While still challenging, he can finish a short story in only two or three weeks.

"I just love short stories and I love to write them," Rash says. "I think short stories are the hardest form to write — harder than poetry and harder than novels. There's concision such as there is in poetry, a sense that every word and every sentence has to be in place for a short story to work. Yet at the same time the reader has to feel the satisfaction of a novel, the sense of an arc, a conclusion, a whole experience being rendered. My hope is that people who have only read Serena might be interested in what I do in a shorter form."

Serena has been called the "Appalachian Macbeth" for its vivid depiction of a 1920s timber baron, his ruthless wife and the greed, politics and human tragedy surrounding the logging industry and the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Rash, whose family has roots in the western mountains of North Carolina going back to the 1700s, says that an understanding of history is "crucial" and that his dedication to historical accuracy "keeps the reader in the story."

"There are certain things we take for granted," he says. "Most people go into the Smoky Mountains and a lot of other areas in western North Carolina and assume it's pristine, that it's never been logged. But if you went into the Smokies in 1925 you would have seen whole mountains razed. People don't even realize how hard it was for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to be created and how easily it can be lost."

Rash says it was the acclaim earned by Serena — which has also been published in Chinese, Korean, Czech, Dutch and French — that made Burning Bright possible.

"Serena was successful enough for me to continue having a publisher," Rash admits. "The publisher of my first three novels actually turned it down, but fortunately another one was interested in it. If Serena had not done well, I know that I would not have been able to get this collection of short stories out." Regardless, Rash — who has been writing "seriously" four or five hours a day, six days a week for 30 years — says he would have continued writing. "You do this because you love it," he says.

In fact, Rash developed his love of writing at age five from a grandfather who could neither read nor write. An often-told story describes how the older man would open Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat and make up a story corresponding to the colorful characters.

But every time he "read" the book, the story would be different, demonstrating to the young Rash the "magic" of words. Rash says he writes out of an obligation not only to his grandfather but also to his parents.

"I'm taking advantage of the opportunities they gave me that they didn't have," he says. "My father quit high school and worked a full shift in a cotton mill, then went to school at night, became a high school art teacher, got a masters degree and taught at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs. My mother went back to school in her thirties to get a college degree in elementary education. They set such a great example and made my life so much easier than their own."

Still, Rash acknowledges that writing is the work of a lifetime.

"I think talent is overrated and persistence is underrated," he says. "So many people start off in high school or college saying they want to be writers, but it's the ones who can stick with it — who don't give up and get discouraged even when they don't get support — that succeed. It's like anything else, if you work at it a long time you get better at it. Too many people who have the ability to write excellent stories and novels give up too quickly."

Rash is impressed with the writers coming out of North Carolina today.

"It's something for the state to be very proud of," he says. "Thomas Wolfe inspired a generation of writers in our state. Then there were people like Lee Smith, Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell and Doris Betts who inspired my own generation and made me aware of the possibility of writing about the region. Whenever someone starts writing well, then others who grew up in that region might say, he did it, or she did it so maybe I can do it too."

Watch Rash read from Serena »