Meanings
noundirty realism (uncountable)
- uncountableA North American literary movement that depicts seamy or mundane aspects of ordinary life in spare, unadorned language.
It was Maryann Burk Carver who won the bread in those early years while Ray drank, fished, went to school and began writing the stories that a generation of critics and teachers would miscategorize as “minimalism” or “dirty realism.”
2009 November 20, Stephen King, “Raymond Carver’s Life and Stories”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
Origin
Coined by Bill Buford of Granta magazine in 1983.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
dirty realism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dirty%20realism
MLA
“dirty realism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dirty%20realism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dirty realism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dirty%20realism.
Source: dirty realism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.