This volume constitutes the proceedings of the First International Workshop on Rewriting Logic and its Applications, held at the Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California, September 3--6, 1996.There are three invited papers by Narciso Marti-Oliet, Ugo Montanari, and Martin Wirsing, and seventeen contributed papers selected by the Program Committee among the submitted papers. They give a rich view of the latest developments and research directions in the field of rewriting logic and its different applications to computing. Besides work on models and on concurrency aspects, there are several papers describing the different rewriting logic languages developed so far in Europe and the US, as well as a paper on semantic foundations for the Cafe language in Japan. There are also several papers on logical and metalogical specification; on reflection and strategies; on applications to object-oriented design, specification and programming; and on applications to constraint solving, to real-time systems, and to discrete event simulation.Besides the papers, the workshop's program has placed strong emphasis on facilitating in-depth discussion of the topics by allowing ample time for the discussion of each paper, by including five panel discussions on specific topics, and by scheduling a tutorial at the beginning of the workshop. I wish to thank all the panelists for having contributed to making the workshop a very stimulating scientific dialogue.I wish to thank my fellow Programme Committee members and those who assisted them in the refereeing process. Each submitted paper was refereed by at least three persons. Thanks to their efforts we have a volume of high-quality contributions.Programme CommitteeFiorella De CindioUniversita di MilanoKokichi FutatsugiJapan Advanced Institute of Science and TechnologyClaude KirchnerINRIA-Lorraine and CRIN-CNRSChristian LengauerUniversitat PassauNarciso Marti-OlietUniversidad Complutense de MadridJose Meseguer (Chair)SRI InternationalUgo MontanariUniversita di PisaCarolyn TalcottStanford UniversityThe workshop has been supported by the US Office of Naval Research and by the US National Security Agency through the ONR Grant N00014-96-1-0824. SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory has also contributed resources needed in the preparation of the workshop. All this support is gratefully acknowledged.Manuel Clavel and Narciso Marti-Oliet have provided invaluable assistance in the preparation of the text of these proceedings. Without them you would not hold this volume in your hands, nor could you browse it on your screen. Judith Burgess deserves very special thanks for her excellent work in all aspects of the workshop's organization.Menlo Park, California, August 1996Jose Meseguer