One of the most influential writers of the 1970s and '80s, Raymond Carver forged a new kind of language for telling stories that was spare, raw, and emotionally resonant. His first collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please was a National Book Award nominee; his third, Cathedral, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1988, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died later that year, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.