Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon on May 25, 1938 and grew up in Yakima, Washington. He was born into a working-class family and would influence his writing throughout his entire career. His father was a sawmill worker, fisherman, and a heavy drinker while his mother worked on and off as a retail clerk and a waitress. Raymond was a heavy drinker throughout his adult life and hit rock bottom numerous times. He became good friends with fellow writer John Cheever while working at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the 1970's. Raymond met his wife, Maryann Burke, while she was working in a Spudnut Shop in Washington in 1955. Raymond and her married in 1957 when she was just two months from turning seventeen years old and pregnant.
     Carver's alcoholism was at an all-time high when he caught his wife flirting with another man. He struck his wife in the head with a wine bottle and almost killed her by severing an artery near her ear. Carver then started to clean himself up by becoming sober with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous in the summer of 1977. After all of the physical and emotional pain that Maryann suffered from Carver, she still stuck by him even when her friends urged her to leave him. After becoming sober, Carver took a job in a teaching position at the University of Texas, El Paso where he met Tess Gallagher who was a fellow writer. Carver was with Gallagher less than half the time he was with Burke and he died in 1988 from lung cancer.