Raymond Carver, 1938 - 1988

Raymond Carver was born in the town of Clatskanie, Oregon (1938), who was, in his own words, a "poet, short story writer, and occasional essayist-in that order." He got married just out of high school and had two children by the age of 21. To support his family, Carver worked as a gas station attendant, deliveryman, and janitor while his wife worked for the phone company. Carver wrote about the lives and problems of ordinary working people. He wrote about alcoholism, domestic abuse, and isolation, and characters who are more resilient than they think they are. His first collection of stories Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? was published in 1976 and established him as a writer. He also wrote Furious Seasons and Other Stories (1977), Cathedral (1983), and Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985). Carver struggled with acute alcoholism for most of his life. He often said that he lived two lives, one that ended the day he quit drinking and another that began the same day. He died of lung cancer in 1988 at the age of fifty. He had been sober for eleven years.