Carver Langston is a cluster of two neighborhoods, Carver and Langston, just south of the United States National Arboretum in Northeast Washington, D.C. The two neighborhoods are most often referred to as one, because they are two small triangular neighborhoods that together form a square of land on the western bank of the Anacostia River. Technically under the jurisdiction of the Kingman Park Civic Association, Carver and Langston are nonetheless separate from that neighborhood.

Carver is the smaller and northernmost neighborhood of the two, bordered by Bladensburg Road to the west, M Street NE to the north, and Maryland Avenue to the southeast. Langston is bordered by Maryland Avenue to the northwest, 22nd and 26th Streets NE to the east, and Benning Road to the south. Directly east of the neighborhood on the very edge of the river is the Langston Golf Course, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the first course in the United States to allow blacks; boxing champion Joe Louis was one of its most frequent visitors.

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was a short story writer and poet. Carver was a major writer of the late 20th century and a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s.

Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mill town on the Columbia River, and grew up in Yakima, Washington. His father, a skilled sawmill worker from Arkansas, was a fisherman and a heavy drinker. Carver's mother worked on and off as a waitress and a retail clerk. His one brother, James Franklin Carver, was born in 1943.

Carver was educated at local schools in Yakima, Washington. In his spare time he read mostly novels by Mickey Spillane or publications such as Sports Afield and Outdoor Life and hunted and fished with friends and family. After graduating from Yakima High School in 1956, Carver worked with his father at a sawmill in California. In June 1957, aged 19, he married 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who had just graduated from a private Episcopal school for girls. Their daughter, Christine La Rae, was born in December 1957. When their second child, a boy named Vance Lindsay, was born the next year, Carver was 20. Carver supported his family by working as a janitor, sawmill laborer, delivery man, and library assistant. During their marriage, Maryann worked as a waitress, salesperson, administrative assistant, and high school English teacher.