Ron Tanner's writing has been named notable in both Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories. His awards for fiction include the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize, the Jack Dyer Prize, the Charles Angoff Prize, the Faulkner Society gold medal, Pushcart Prize, New Letters Award, and many others, as well as fellowships from the Michener/Copernicus Society, Sewanee Writers Conference, and the National Park Service, to name a few. His novel Missile Paradise was named a notable book of 2017 by the American Library Association. He lives on an historic farm in Maryland and directs the Good Contrivance Farm Writer's Retreat, an educational nonprofit.
