Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena , in addition to four other prizewinning novels, including The Cove , One Foot in Eden , Saints at the River , and The World Made Straight ; four collections of poems; and five collections of stories, among them Burning Bright , which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories , which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.