Ron Rash (born September 25, 1953) is an American poet, short story writer and novelist and the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University.

[5] Ron Rash holds the John and Dorothy Parris Professorship in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, where he teaches poetry and fiction in the Department of English.

It fleshes out the characters and themes of Raising the Dead (2002), tells the story of a community displaced, disguised as a murder mystery and imbued with Rash's poetic language.

His sophomore effort, Saints at the River (2004), covers a dispute in a South Carolina community torn over the issue of environmentalism.

This piece acts with dual purpose, as a coming-of-age story set in the 1970s Appalachia and a meditation on the role of the past on the present, in this case a Civil War massacre that has divided Madison County, North Carolina.