Raymond Carver Podcast

In this very special episode, Selected Shorts actors Kirsten Vangsness (Criminal Minds, Dave Made a Maze), Dion Graham (The Wire,  After the First 48) and Zach Grenier (Deadwood, Fight Club) perform live versions of stories and poems by Billy Collins, T.C. Boyle, Tess Gallagher, and Raymond Carver in Port Angeles, Washington during the 2024 Carver and Gallagher Writing Festival (April 27th 2024.) This episode will launch January 15th 2026. Permissions will expire January 15, 2029 ... enjoy it while you can!

This year, Clatskanie's Raymond Carver Writing Festival will be held Saturday, May 3rd 2025. We hope to see you there! This all day event is mostly free.

Event Announcement: Kim Stafford, Robert Michael Pyle, Chad Wriglesworth from the Raymond Carver Review, and more at a free festival in Clatskanie, Oregon May 17th and 18th 2024. 

Coming April 25, 26, 27 in Port Angeles, join us for our ambitious new festival.  Big writers, little city. Details on Eventbrite and the Raymond Carver Podcast website.  Look for the Raymond Carver & Tess Gallagher Creative Writing Festival 2024. 

Carol Sklenicka is the author of the biography Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life. In this episode we discuss her exhaustive biography of Carver before diving into one of his most beloved stories "So Much Water so Close to Home". 

In this episode we explore a very rare piece of work by Raymond Carver, his one-act play "Carnations". Our special guest was a fellow student, friend, and actor involved with the writing and production of this "forgotten" play in Arcata, California in 1962. 

In this special episode we explore Carver's documents, notebooks, and original manuscript drafts in his official archives at the Ohio State University's Thompson Library in Columbus. Join me as I consider both microsopic and big picture questions regarding Carver's writing, life, drafting, editing habits, and unpublished work.  

We are very excited to publish details about the first annual Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher Creative Writing Festival to be held in Port Angeles, Washington: April 25-27, 2024. Listen here to learn more. 

Here you will find background information and anecdotes related to Season 2 Episode 2 with Susan Cheever, including: the ghost of John Cheever, a Carver interview about Cheever, a relevant bible verse explained, and more. 

In this episode I interview Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Susan Cheever. We begin by discussing what might be Raymond Carver's most unusual story, "The Train". "The Train" is a sequel to "The Five-Forty-Eight", a beloved short story by her father, John Cheever. We met at the OSU archives in Columbus, Ohio (where Carver's papers are kept) to discuss "The Train", Raymond Carver and John Cheever's friendship, and Susan Cheever's many fine books of fiction and nonfiction.