is the author of seven books.  He is the recipient of the Katherine Munson Foster Memorial Award and the Image Magazine Creative Prize.  His memoir, Into That Good Night, the first non-agented property published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in over five years, was a national short list finalist for the P.E.N. Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award and was selected as the second best work of nonfiction in the nation for the year 1998 by the San Antonio Express-News. He has taught writing workshops at numerous conferences and universities, and was twice the memoir teacher at the Newman National Writer’s Conference at Mississippi College.  His articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, and he was the Barnes and Noble Author of the Month in both the Houston and Dallas markets.  He has been a featured author at the Texas Book Festival in Austin and the Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio.  Touching Winter, a novel made up of a quartet of stories, was published in October, 2005, by TCU Press and was a short list finalist for The Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction of the Year Prize.  Ron and his wife Karen, a third grade teacher, are empty nesters.  A graduate of Sam Houston State University, Class of 1977, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Political Science.