Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories (1988), is the last collection published by Carver during his lifetime. The collection offers readers the chance to compare early and late Carver.

Bobbie Ann Mason's collection of short stories, Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), is another example of well-written short stories. Mason, like Carver, has been labeled a ''Kmart realist'' by a number of critics.

The American Short Story: Short Stories from the Rea Award (1993), edited by Michael Rea, provides students with a fine collection of short stories and minimalist prose. Rea has selected stories by Anne Beattie, Charles Baxter, Raymond Carver, and Grace Paley, among others.

Conversations with Raymond Carver, edited by Marshall Bruce Gentry and William L. Stull (1990), offers twenty-five interviews with the writer, conducted during the years from 1977 to just before his death in 1988.

Ultramarine (1986), is Carver's final volume of poetry, offering students a chance to see Carver the poet in addition to Carver the short story writer.

The important Carver essay, ‘‘On Writing,’’ appears in a notable collection of Carver's short stories, poetry and essays, Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories (1983).