Dirty realism is a North American literary movement born in the 1970s-80s in which the narrative is stripped down to its fundamental features.

This movement is a derivation from minimalism. As minimalism, dirty realism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Authors working within the genre tend to eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional. Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and core self expression. ...

Dirty realism authors include the short story writers Raymond Carver (1938-1988), Tobias Wolff (1945), Richard Ford (1944), Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950) and other authors. This article is in need of attention. ... Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. ... Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff (born June 19, 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama) is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. ... Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer. ... Pedro Juan Gutiérrez born in 1950 (Matanzas, Cuba) and he was a journalist. ...