Ron Rash on AVM
Ron Rash's first published work was the collection of short stories, The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth and Other Stories from Cliffside, North Carolina. The ten stories in this collection are told through the voices of a chicken farmer, a carpenter, and a man who has recently returned home to visit his mother. The three characters come together one night and share their visions of what the town of Cliffside means to them, what the town's past has been, what might lie ahead for the community, and the effect it and its southern culture has had upon their own lives. Gilbert Allen, a writer for the Georgia Review, commended Rash for creating "memorable voices and a host of unforgettable images." Rash won the Sherwood Anderson Award in 1996, two years after the publication of this collection.