In these four short videos, southern Appalachian poet Ron Rash reads three poems and an excerpt from his novel, Saints at the River. Drawing upon local knowledge and lore, memory, current events, and personal experience, Rash's writing explores his region's cultural and natural environment while raising questions about the everyday mysteries of existence. These readings were filmed at sites around Cullowhee, North Carolina.

RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime | Text

RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime | Text

RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime | Text

RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime | Text

Ron Rash grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and graduated from Gardner-Webb College and Clemson University. Rash's family has lived in the southern Appalachian Mountains since the eighteenth century, and this region has been the primary focus of his writing career. He cites a diverse array of writers, including James Joyce, Philip Roth, and Eudora Welty, as important influences on his creative approach to place.

Rash's poetry and fiction have appeared in many magazines, such as Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, Poetry, and The Oxford American. He is the author of three short story collections, The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth (1994), Casualties (2000), and Chemistry and Other Stories (2007); three volumes of poetry, Eureka Mill (2001), Among the Believers (2000), and Raising the Dead (2002); three novels, One Foot in Eden (2004), Saints at the River (2004), and The World Made Straight (2007); and a children's book, The Shark's Tooth (2001). His list of awards includes The Academy of American Poets Prize, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the Fellowship of Southern Writers' James Still Award for Writing of the Appalachian South, the O. Henry Prize, and the Southern Book Critic Circle Award. He has taught at the University of South Carolina and is currently the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.