th<\/sup> at 7:30 PM at the East Tennessee History Center. The talk is free and open to the public, but registration is required.\u00a0 Visit the knoxfriends.org to register. This lecture is part of the Knox County Library\u2019s Wilma Dykeman lecture series. Rash will be introduced by Jim Stokely, the son of Wilma Dykeman and the president of the Wilma Dykeman Legacy foundation.<\/p>\nThe Appalachia of Ron Rash is the land we are familiar with: the beautiful mountains, the small hamlets, family farms and the legacies of the past.\u00a0 But to Rash, it is also the land of methamphetamine addicts, environmental destruction, ignorance and sudden, violent death.\u00a0 His second novel, Saints at the River<\/i>, opens with a tourist family picnicking alongside a picturesque mountain creek, standard territory for regional novelists.\u00a0 Within a few minutes, however, a young girl is pulled under by the current and drowned, her body trapped under the rushing water by hydraulic force.\u00a0 Thus is ignited a showdown between the girl\u2019s family, political friends, protectors of the tourist industry and fervent environmentalists.\u00a0 In The World<\/i> Made Straight<\/i>, the young man at the center of the novel is caught, literally, in an animal trap as he attempts to raid a marijuana grower\u2019s crop and, figuratively, between his inherent intelligence and potential and the downward tug of ambitionless friends, a doubting father and his own bad impulses.\u00a0 Interwoven in the contemporary story line is the Civil War era journal kept by a doctor that recounts the tremendous struggles that existed in the mountain region during the conflict that not only divided families and communities at the time but created divisions that continue to resonate.<\/p>\n
Rash\u2019s first book, a collection of short stories entitled The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth<\/i> was published in 1994.\u00a0 In the twenty years since then he has written four collections of poetry, four more short story collections, five novels and a children\u2019s book.\u00a0 His work has earned him numerous awards including the prestigious Frank O\u2019Connor International Short Story Award for Burning Bright <\/i>and the 2004 Fiction Book of the Year for Saints at the River<\/i> (given by both the Southern Book Critics and the Southeastern Booksellers Association).\u00a0 He has twice been a finalist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was awarded the James Still Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers.<\/p>\n
Rash writes about the world he has always known.\u00a0 His family has lived in the southern Appalachian Mountains since the mid-eighteen century.\u00a0 A native of Boling Springs, North Carolina \u2013about thirty miles west of Charlotte \u2013 Rash graduated from Gardner Webb University in Boiling Springs and then from Clemson University.\u00a0 He holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Ron Rash\u2019s life may be about to change.\u00a0 A film version of his most ambitious novel, Serena<\/i>, is set to be released in April of this year.\u00a0 Directed by Danish film maker Susanne Bier and starring perennial Oscar nominees Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, the film was primarily filmed in the Czech Republic with some footage shot in the Cataloochee Valley in Haywood County, NC.\u00a0 \u00a0A second film based on a Rash novel is also in the works.\u00a0 A smaller scale production, \u201cThe World Made Straight,\u201d based on Rash\u2019s novel of the same name, is being filmed in Buncombe and Madison counties, NC and features actors Jeremy Irvine (\u201cWar Horse\u201d) and Noah Wyle (\u201cE.R.\u201d).<\/p>\n
The novel Serena<\/i> has received very positive reviews and was a New York Times Bestseller.\u00a0\u00a0 While Rash claims not to read reviews of his work if he can help it, his most recent short story collection, Nothing<\/i> Gold Can Stay<\/i>, has garnered reviews any author would be proud of.\u00a0 USA Today stated, \u201cA terrible beauty, to use Yeat\u2019s poetic phrase, colors many of Ron Rash\u2019s stories filled with violence, dark humor and surprise endings.\u00a0 His prose is spare, clean and often haunting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
View a recording of this event The Library Society of UT Knoxville and the Friends of the Knox County Library are proud to sponsor Ron Rash on March 4th at 7:30 PM at the East Tennessee History Center. The talk is free and open to the public, but registration is required.\u00a0 Visit the knoxfriends.org to … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,14,29],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRon Rash: A Unique Appalachian Voice - News - News from the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow\" \/>\n<meta name=\"googlebot\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"bingbot\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/old.lib.utk.edu\/news\/2014\/02\/ron-rash-a-unique-appalachian-voice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ron Rash: A Unique Appalachian Voice - News - News from the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"View a recording of this event The Library Society of UT Knoxville and the Friends of the Knox County Library are proud to sponsor Ron Rash on March 4th at 7:30 PM at the East Tennessee History Center. 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<\/p>\n