Ron Rash
Chattanooga State Community College’s Humanities Department will kick off its award-winning Writers@Work program on Monday, April 11, at the Chattanooga Public Library Auditorium beginning at 6 p.m. Robert Morgan will read from his works, answer questions, and sign books during this public event.
On Tuesday, April 12, both Ron Rash and Robert Morgan will sign books at Starline Books on Market Street at 4:30 p.m. before taking the stage in the Chattanooga State Humanities Auditorium.
A “Behind the Writer” interview begins at 7:00 p.m. and will be followed by a book signing and dessert reception.
Both authors will read from their works, answer audience questions, and sign books at the Hunter Museum of Art on Wednesday, April 13 at 6:30 p.m. Guests will enjoy a dessert reception and a collection of historical photographs from Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library, “A Glimpse at the Time of Serena.”
The final public event will be held on Thursday, April 14, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Chattanooga State “Introduction to Film” students will host a Q&A with Ron Rash about the film adaptation of his novelSerena in the Chattanooga State Humanities Auditorium.
All events are free and open to the public.
American poet and novelist Ron Rash was born and raised in South Carolina where he currently resides with his wife and two children. Rash's poetry, short stories, and novels focus on the lives of people in rural, southern settings.
Mr. Rash is the author of nine books and holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. A highly regarded author, Mr. Rash was awarded an NEA Poetry Fellowship in 1994, received the Sherwood Anderson prize in 1996, won the Novella Festival Novel Award in 2001 and in 2002, and won ForeWord Magazine’s Gold Medal in Literary Fiction for One Foot in Eden. The novel was also named Appalachian Book of the Year. Both the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association named his second novel, Saints at the River, Fiction Book of the Year. In 2005 Rash won an O. Henry award for his story “Speckled Trout” and received the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Mr. Rash's themes of everyday Southern life and the losses experienced by its people continue to resonate with readers and critics alike. “I think that what I love about writing is the ability to try to, in a sense, take a vacation from yourself and try to enter the sensibility of another time, another character, another place,” said Mr. Rash.
Robert Morgan was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. At the University of North Carolina at both Chapel Hill and Greensboro he studied with the poet, Fred Chappell, and later joined the faculty of Cornell University in New York, where he still teaches English and creative writing.
In recent years, Mr. Morgan has gained wide recognition as a prose writer, in large part due to Oprah Winfrey selecting his novel,Gap Creek, for her book club in 2000. His fiction aesthetic is deliberately antipoetic: he prefers a lean style that allows him to focus on narrative conflict. “In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible,” said Mr. Morgan.
Writers@Work creates opportunities for students and members of the community to interact with well-known Southern writers and presents an alternate view of what it means to have a Southern voice. Through analyzing these works and interacting with the authors, students and the community develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be a Southerner.
For more information about the Writers@Work program or this year’s featured writers, please emailErica.Lux@chattanoogastate.edu or call 423-697-3233.
Robert Morgan