Ron Rash, the John and Dorothy Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, is the recipient of a prestigious O. Henry Prize for 2005.

Rash, who teaches in the English department at Western, received the award for his short story “Speckle Trout,” published in the spring 2003 edition of The Kenyon Review. His is one of 20 stories selected for the prize from more than 1,000 submitted by magazine editors from across North America.

The O. Henry Prize is the latest in a series of awards received by Rash. The Fellowship of Southern Writers recently has named him recipient of its James Still Award for Writing of the Appalachian South. Rash’s One Foot in Eden won the 2003 Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year Award and Foreword Magazine’s Gold Medal for Best Literary Novel of 2002.

Rash’s winning story will be published along with other prize-wining stories in a collection titled “The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005” by Anchor Books.

Among past winners of the O. Henry Prize are such influential writers as Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Thurber, James Baldwin, Woody Allen, Mary McCarthy, Alice Walker, Chaim Potok, J.D. Salinger, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Andrea Barrett, John Irving and Stephen King.