Poets

American short-story writer and poet, a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s. Carver's reputation continued to grow after his death at the age of fifty. Robert Altman's much praised film Short Cuts (1993) was based on several of Carver's stories. His short fiction is often placed in the realistic tradition of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway and its post-modern version called minimalism. Carver himself did not like the label, because it "smacks of smallness of vision and execution.."

"I love the swift leap of a good story, the excitement that often commences in the first sentence, the sense of beauty and mystery found in the best of them; and the fact - so crucially important to me back at the beginning and now still a consideration - that the story can be written and read in one sitting. (Like poems!)

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, a mill town on the Columbia River in Oregon. His father was a sawmill worker, a violent alcoholic, and mother worked as a waitress or as a retail clerk or else stayed home. His family moved a lot in his childhood. Carver was educated at a local school in Yakima, Washington. At home his father used to tell him stories about his grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War, for both sides. Carver read mostly Mickey Spillane's novels, or Sports Afield and Outdoor Life. In 1957, at the age of 19, he married his high-school girlfriend, the sixteen-year-old Maryann Burk, who was pregnant and just graduated..