Best-selling novelist, short story writer, and poet Ron Rash will open this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 26, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus of Penn State. The event is free and open to the public.
Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times best-selling novel "Serena" as well as "One Foot in Eden," "Saints at the River," "The World Made Straight" and "Above the Waterfall." His latest novel, "The Risen," was released on Sept. 6.
Publisher’s Weekly offers the following praise for "The Risen": “Beyond the propulsion of Rash’s thrilled whodunit plot is his characteristically excellent prose.” Dannye Powell at The Charlotte Observer proclaims, “'The Risen' is an important novel – and an intriguing one – from one of our master storytellers. In its pages, the past rises up, haunting and chiding, demanding answers of us all.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has hailed him as “our Appalachian Shakespeare."
Rash has also published five collections of poems and six collections of stories. His short story collection, "Burning Bright," received the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; another collection, "Chemistry and Other Stories," was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Rash is also a two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize and winner of the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Rash currently lives in North Carolina with his family and teaches at Western Carolina University, where he serves as the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a project of Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. It receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing and the University Libraries.
A full listing of readings in the series is available at https://sites.psu.edu/psuwriters/.