Raymond Carver

Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, Carver worked at a sawmill after graduation from high school. Other jobs followed including gas station attendant, hospital janitor, and deliveryman, all held to support his growing family. He earned enough money to attend Humboldt State College in California where he received a B.A. degree in English in 1963.

Carver attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1963. Years later, in the fall semester of 1973, Carver would become a teacher in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, appointed as a visiting lecturer. While in Iowa, he lived alone in the Iowa House upstairs from John Cheever. He would return to Iowa City in 1978, after receiving a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He and his wife lived together in Iowa City from March through June that year, before moving to the University of Texas.

In 1995, the University of Iowa Press released “Raymond Carver, and Oral Biography” written by Sam Halpert, which included “interviews with close companions, acquaintances which arranged the reminiscences of Carver's adult life, recalling his difficult ‘Bad Raymond’ days through his second life as a recovering alcoholic and triumphantly successful writer.” The University of Iowa Press has also hosted Raymond Carver as the judge for the ‘Iowa Short Fiction Award’.

His poetry books include Near Klamath (1968), Winter Insomnia (1970), and the posthumous A New Path to the Waterfall (1989). His stories are collected in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) and Furious Seasons (1977).

Read an Interview with Raymond Carver about his time in Iowa.

Author biography in part by Deanna Sue Thomann, The Iowa Literary Walk website

Faculty |Iowa Writers' Workshop
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