stephen king biography

Stephen King

Stephen King is a 'New York Times'-bestselling novelist who made his name in the horror and fantasy genres with books like 'Carrie,' 'The Shining' and 'IT.' Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV.

Who Is Stephen King?

Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. He graduated from the University of Maine and later worked as a teacher while establishing himself as a writer. Having also published work under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King's first horror novel, Carrie , was a huge success. Over the years, King has become known for titles that are both commercially successful and sometimes critically acclaimed. His books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide and been adapted into numerous successful films.

Early Life and Education

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. King is recognized as one of the most famous and successful horror writers of all time. His parents, Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, split up when he was very young, and he and his brother David divided their time between Indiana and Connecticut for several years. King later moved back to Maine with his mother and brother. There he graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in 1966.

King stayed close to home for college, attending the University of Maine at Orono. There he wrote for the school's newspaper and served in its student government. While in school, King published his first short story, which appeared in Startling Mystery Stories . After graduating with a degree in English in 1970, he tried to find a position as a teacher but had no luck at first. King took a job in a laundry and continued to write stories in his spare time until late 1971, when he began working as an English educator at Hampden Academy. It was that year that he also married fellow writer Tabitha Spruce.

King of Thrills and Chills

While making novels about vicious, rabid dogs and sewer-dwelling monsters — as seen in Cujo and IT , respectively — King published several books as Richard Bachman. Four early novels — Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981) and The Running Man (1982) — were published under the moniker because of King's concern that the public wouldn't accept more than one book from an author within a year. He came up with the alias after seeing a novel by Richard Stark on his desk (actually a pseudonym used by Donald Westlake) coupled with what he heard playing on his record player at the time — "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," by Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Television and Film Adaptations

Although many of King's works were made into film or TV adaptations — Cujo and Firestarter were released for the big screen in 1983 and '84 respectively, while It debuted as a miniseries in 1990 — the film The Shining , released in 1980 and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall , became a renowned horror thriller that has stood the test of time.

For a good portion of his career, King wrote novels and stories at a breakneck speed. He published several books per year for much of the 1980s and '90s. His compelling, thrilling tales have continued to be used as the basis of numerous films for the big and small screens. Actress Kathy Bates and actor James Caan starred in the critically and commercially successful adaptation of Misery in 1990, with Bates winning an Oscar for her performance as the psychotic Annie Wilkes.

Four years later, The Shawshank Redemption , starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman and based on one of his stories, became another acclaimed outing with multiple Oscar nominations. King's 1978 novel The Stand became a 1994 miniseries with Molly Ringwald and Gary Sinise in the lead, while the mid-'90s serialized outing The Green Mile was turned into a 1999 prison-based film starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan .

King continues to create and be involved in provocative projects. He has worked directly in television, writing for series like Kingdom Hospital and Under the Dome , with the latter based on his 2009 novel. In 2011, he published 11/22/63 , a novel involving time travel as part of an effort to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy .

King also wrote Joyland (2013), a pulp-fiction style thriller that takes readers on a journey to uncovering who's behind an unsolved murder. And he surprised audiences by releasing Doctor Sleep (2013), a sequel to The Shining , with Sleep hitting No. 1 on the New York Time s bestseller list.

The novelist then published Mr. Mercedes (2014), with Finders Keepers (2015) and End of Watch (2016) rounding out the crime trilogy. In 2017, he teamed with son Owen to deliver Sleeping Beauties , about a mysterious pandemic that leaves women enveloped in cocoons. That year he polished off another collaboration, with Richard Chizmar, on the novella Gwendy's Button Box .

Meanwhile, adaptations of King's works have continued to populate the big and small screens. In 2017, the first season of Mr. Mercedes began airing on the Audience Network, while a remake of the horror classic IT enjoyed a hefty box-office haul. In 2019, an adaptation of Doctor Sleep and IT Chapter Two hit theaters, along with a reboot of another signature King property, Pet Sematary.

That year also brought the publication of the tireless writer's 61st novel, The Institute , about children with supernatural abilities who are taken from their parents and incarcerated by a mysterious organization.

Personal Life

King and his novelist wife divide their time between Florida and Maine. They have three children: Naomi Rachel, a reverend; Joseph Hillstrom, who writes under the pen name Joe Hill and is a lauded horror-fiction writer in his own right; and Owen Phillip, whose first collection of stories was published in 2005.

In honor of his prolific output and success in his craft, King was among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2015.

Outside of writing, King is a music fan. He even sometimes plays guitar and sings in a band called Rock Bottom Remainders with fellow literary stars like Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver and Amy Tan . The group has performed a number of times over the years to raise money for charity.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Stephen Edwin King
• Birth Year: 1947
• Birth date: September 21, 1947
• Birth State: Maine
• Birth City: Portland
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Stephen King is a 'New York Times'-bestselling novelist who made his name in the horror and fantasy genres with books like 'Carrie,' 'The Shining' and 'IT.' Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Durham Elementary School
• University of Maine
• Lisbon Falls High School

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Stephen King Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/stephen-king
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 30, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• [French is] the language that turns dirt into romance.
• We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.
• As a writer, I've always been confrontational. I've never been cool, I've never been calculating.
• There are plenty of people who have got lots of talent. This world is lousy with talent. The idea is to work that talent and try to get to be the best person that you can, given the limits of the talent that God gave you — or fate, or genetics or whatever name you want to put on it.

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Stephen King

• Born September 21 , 1947 · Portland, Maine, USA
• Birth name Stephen Edwin King
• The King of Horror
• The Master of Mystery
• Height 6′ 4″ (1.93 m)
• Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, at the Maine General Hospital in Portland. His parents were Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury), who worked as a caregiver at a mental institute, and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman. His father was born under the surname "Pollock," but used the last name "King," under which Stephen was born. He has an older brother, David. The Kings were a typical family until one night, when Donald said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. Ruth took over raising the family with help from relatives. They traveled throughout many states over several years, finally moving back to Durham, Maine, in 1958. Stephen began his actual writing career in January of 1959, when David and Stephen decided to publish their own local newspaper named "Dave's Rag". David bought a mimeograph machine, and they put together a paper they sold for five cents an issue. Stephen attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, in 1962. Collaborating with his best friend Chris Chesley in 1963, they published a collection of 18 short stories called "People, Places, and Things--Volume I". King's stories included "Hotel at the End of the Road", "I've Got to Get Away!", "The Dimension Warp", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", "The Stranger", "I'm Falling", "The Cursed Expedition", and "The Other Side of the Fog." A year later, King's amateur press, Triad and Gaslight Books, published a two-part book titled "The Star Invaders". King made his first actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in length. In 1966 he graduated from high school and took a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom." Later that summer King began working on a novel called "Getting It On", about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward off the National Guard. During his first year at college, King completed his first full-length novel, "The Long Walk." He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf /Random House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection badly and filed the book away. He made his first small sale--$35--with the story "The Glass Floor". In June 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and a certificate to teach high school. King's next idea came from the poem by Robert Browning , "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." He found bright colored green paper in the library and began work on "The Dark Tower" saga, but his chronic shortage of money meant that he was unable to further pursue the novel, and it, too, was filed away. King took a job at a filling station pumping gas for the princely sum of $1.25 an hour. Soon he began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. On January 2, 1971, he married Tabitha King (born Tabitha Jane Spruce). In the fall of 1971 King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of Bangor. Stephen then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White. After completing a few pages, he decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately, Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story, which he did. In January 1973 he submitted "Carrie" to Doubleday. In March Doubleday bought the book. On May 12 the publisher sold the paperback rights for the novel to New American Library for $400,000. His contract called for his getting half of that sum, and he quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. The rest, as they say, is history. Since then King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies made from his work. He has been called the "Master of Horror". His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, and writes out of his home. In June 1999 King was severely injured in an accident, he was walking alongside a highway and was hit by a van, that left him in critical condition with injuries to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After three weeks of operations, he was released from the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Christian Skibinski
• Spouse Tabitha King (January 2, 1971 - present) (3 children)
• Children Naomi Rachel King Joe Hill Owen King
• Parents Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury) Donald Edwin King
• Relatives David King (Sibling)
• Usually sets stories in Maine, particularly (until "Needful Things") in the small town of Castle Rock, which he created.
• Most of his lead male characters are writers
• Almost always has a cameo in the movies or mini-series based on his novels
• Makes references to his previous novels in his books
• Horror and fantasy themes
• After watching the first cut of Rob Reiner 's Stand by Me (1986) , he was said to be crying and stated it was the closest adaptation to one of his novels he'd ever seen.
• In the 1980s he was battling a cocaine addiction. At one time his wife organized a group of family and friends and confronted him. She dumped onto the floor his trashcan, which included beer cans, cigarette butts, cough and cold medicines and various drug paraphernalia. Her message to him was: "Get help or get out. We love you, but we don't want to witness your suicide." He got help and was able to become clean and sober.
• King owns two neighboring houses in Bangor. He wanted to build an underground tunnel with a trolley you could ride between them. When asked why, he replied, "because I can".
• Will allow aspiring film-makers to purchase the film rights to any of his short stories (and only short-stories, not novels) for a dollar. The resulting films are sent directly to him and, if he enjoys them, placed on a shelf marked "Dollar-Babies.".
• King writes for 3-4 hours a day. He used to write 2000-3000 words a day, now he can only manage 1000.
• I've killed enough of the world's trees.
• I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami.
• Each life makes its own imitation of immortality.
• When asked, "How do you write?", I invariably answer, "One word at a time".
• I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

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Stephen King Biography

Born: September 21, 1947 Portland, Maine American author

Stephen King is a very popular author of horror fiction. In his works he blends elements of the traditional gothic (bleak and threatening) tale with those of the modern psychological (how the mind works) thriller, detective, and science fiction stories.

His early years

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When he was two years old, his father left the family, leaving his mother to care for Stephen and his older brother, David. She took a series of low-paying jobs to support her children, and as a result the boys saw little of their mother.

As a boy King found a box of fantasyhorror fiction books and stories that had belonged to his father, and he read them all. By the time King was seven he had begun writing his own stories. He enjoyed watching science fiction and monster movies.

"Writing has always been it for me," King indicated in a panel discussion at the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada. Science fiction and adventure stories comprised his first literary efforts. King began submitting short fiction to magazines when he was twelve. He had no success at that time selling his stories, but he did win first prize in an essay competition sponsored by a scholastic magazine. In high school King authored a small, satiric (poking fun at human weakness) newspaper entitled The Village Vomit. He published his first story at eighteen in a magazine called Comics Review.

King graduated from high school in 1966. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Maine in 1970. He married Tabitha Spruce, also a writer, the following year. They have three children.

After college

After graduating from college, King taught English at a high school in Maine and added to his income by holding a number of part-time jobs and by writing short stories for several popular magazines. He did not receive much money from the sale of his stories. Sometimes he was not paid at all but was given extra copies of the magazine to show or sell to other people.

King's first novel was Carrie, published in 1974. It was a huge success, which allowed King to quit his other jobs and write full-time. With this book, King became one of the top writers of horror stories.

King's fiction features everyday language, attention to the details of the story's surroundings, the emotional feelings of his characters, realistic settings, and an emphasis on modern problems. King's popularity comes from his ability to create stories in which evil occurs in ordinary situations.

Many of King's stories are semiautobiographical, meaning that they are taken in part from some of his own experiences. Many of the locations he writes about are based on the places he grew up in when he lived in Maine and other locations. Many of his stories deal with ordinary people who are faced with frightening events they have to try to understand and overcome.

A publishing marvel, King has nearly one hundred million copies of his works in print worldwide. He is the first writer to have had three, four, and finally five titles appear simultaneously (at the same time) on the New York Times bestseller list.

How King approaches writing

King used to write every day except for Christmas day, the Fourth of July, and his own birthday. Very often he would work on two or three stories at a time, switching from one to another as ideas came to him.

King has also admitted that during the period between 1977 and 1984 he wrote five novels under the pseudonym (a false name used to hide the identity of the writer) Richard Bachman. He did this to disguise the true extent of his prolific (abundant, in great quantity) work. Also, his publisher believed that he had already saturated (filled to capacity) the market.

In his stories King also likes to write about how people relate to one another in scary situations. His characters are taken from both young and older people who come from many different backgrounds. King has said that he just wants to scare people. He likes to frighten his readers after he has made them love his characters. While stressing the importance of characterization (describing the qualities of characters), he regards the story itself as the most essential part of crafting fiction.

Even though he is very successful, King is modest. In an interview with Yankee magazine he said, "I'm leery [cautious] of thinking I'm somebody. Because nobody really is. Everybody is able to do something well, but in this country there's a premium [special value] put on stardom." He also said there is an "occupational hazard" (a danger based on a job) in being a successful writer, because of all the attention a writer can receive.

The accident

King had his own personal experience with horror on the afternoon of June 19, 1999. As he was walking near his summer home in Bangor, Maine, he was struck by a van. King had many operations to repair a collapsed lung and multiple fractures (small breaks) to his leg and hip. He then spent many months recovering in the hospital. King did get well but did not regain the same state of health he had before the accident.

The driver who hit King claimed the dog in his van distracted him. It was found he had several driving violations (acts of breaking the law). He was fined, but he did not go to jail, nor was his driver's license taken away.

Movies, television, and the World Wide Web

Many of Stephen King's books and stories have been made into movies for both Hollywood and for television. These include Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Christine, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile.

In 2000 King's publisher, Simon & Schuster, published his novella (short novel) Riding the Bullet in electronic form. After that King became the first well-known author to self-publish on the Internet when he published several segments of a new book, The Plant, on the Web. In 2000 he also wrote On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. In this book he tried to give advice to people who want to become writers based on his own experiences.

In early 2002 King announced his retirement from writing, saying that he has said everything that he set out to say.

Stephen King is regarded as a master of the horror story, developing this type of tale to a new level. The ideal format for horror tales used to be the short story, but King is one of the first to challenge that idea. He has written not just successful horror novels, but successful, long horror novels. His fans may take comfort in the fact that retirement is not always permanent.

For More Information

Beahm, George W. Stephen King: America's Best-Loved Boogeyman. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, 1998.

Collings, Michael R. The Many Facets of Stephen King. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1985.

Keyishian, Amy, and Marjorie Keyishian. Stephen King. New York: Chelsea House, 1996.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000.

Wilson, Suzan. Stephen King: King of Thrillers and Horror. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000.

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About Stephen King

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. Stephen made his first professional short story sale (‘The Glass Floor’) to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men’s magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy. Then, in the spring of 1973, his novel Carrie was accepted for publication. This was followed by ‘Salem’s Lot . The following year, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado, where Stephen wrote The Shining . Returning to a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine, Stephen finished The Stand and The Dead Zone .

In 1977, the Kings spent three months in England. He and his wife now spend winters in Florida, and the remainder of the year in their Bangor and Lovell homes in Maine. Stephen King has written more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His acclaimed novels and short story collections include Carrie , The Shining , The Stand , Misery and 11.22.63 . He is also the author of The Dark Tower fantasy series and a wonderful non-fiction book: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Many of King’s books have been turned into celebrated films, including Stand by Me , The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption .

Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

‘America’s greatest living novelist’ – Lee Child

For more information, visit stephenking.com

Adapted from the original biography written by Tabitha King and updated by Marsha DeFilippo.

Stephen King on Twitter

Browse the stephen king library.

Stephen King Biography

Birthday: September 21 , 1947 ( Virgo )

Born In: Portland, Maine, United States

One of the most popular writers of contemporary horror, suspense and science fiction, American author Stephen King has published over 50 novels and penned hundreds of short stories. Best known for writing the horror novel ‘It’ which revolves around a mysterious maleficent being that terrorizes children, King is undoubtedly one of the most loved horror writers whose writings never fail to incite fear, terror and fright in the minds of the readers. The author who mostly publishes under his real name also used to publish under the pseudonym ‘Richard Bachman’. Funnily enough, the sale of Richard Bachman’s books increased manifold after it was revealed that Bachman was none other than Stephen King himself. King is a highly prolific writer and the winner of multiple awards including the prestigious Bram Stoker Awards. Growing up King had a difficult childhood as he was raised by a single mother in financially difficult circumstances. While still a small boy he witnessed the horrific death of a friend who was struck and killed by a train in front of his eyes—this incident might have played a role in inspiring some of his darker writings. His first published novel was ‘Carrie’ which was so successful that it led to several film and Broadway adaptations.

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Nick Name: The King of horror, Richard Bachman, The King

Also Known As: Stephen Edwin King

Age: 76 Years , 76 Year Old Males

Spouse/Ex-: Tabitha King (m. 1971)

father: Donald Edwin King

mother: Nellie Ruth

siblings: David

children: Joe King, Naomi King, Owen King

Born Country: United States

Poets Novelists

Height: 6'4" (193 cm ), 6'4" Males

U.S. State: Maine

Notable Alumni: University Of Maine

City: Portland, Maine

education: University Of Maine

awards: 2005 - Horror Award for Best Adaptation 2002 - Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award 1981 - British Fantasy Society Special Award

2004 - Deutscher Phantastik Preis for International Author of the Year 2004 - World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement 1995 - USC Scripter Award 1992 – Fantafestival Award for Best Screenplay

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Stephen King has spent half a century scaring us, but his legacy is so much more than horror

It’s a big year for King adaptations, but the movies only tell part of the story.

by Aja Romano

It’s nearly impossible to overstate how influential Stephen King is. For the past four decades, no single writer has dominated the landscape of genre writing like him. To date, he is the only author in history to have had more than 30 books become No. 1 best-sellers. He now has more than 70 published books, many of which have become cultural icons, and his achievements extend so far beyond a single genre at this point that it’s impossible to limit him to one — even though, as the world was reminded last year when the feature film adaptation of It became the highest-grossing horror movie on record, horror is still King’s calling card.

In fact, we’ve been enjoying a cultural resurgence of quality King horror adaptations lately, from small-screen adaptations like Gerald’s Game and Castle Rock to the upcoming remake of Pet Sematary , the first trailer for which looks like a promising continuation of the trend.

That means if you’re a King fan — or looking to become one — there’s no better time to rediscover why he’s such a beloved cultural phenomenon.

After all, without King, we wouldn’t have modern works like Stranger Things , whose adolescent ensemble directly channels the Losers’ Club, King’s ensemble of geeky preteen friends from It . Without The Shining , and Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece film adaptation, “Here’s Johnny!” would be a dead talk show catchphrase and parodies like the Simpsons’ annual Treehouse of Horror would be bereft of much of their material.

Without Carrie , we wouldn’t have the single defining image of the horror of high school: a vat of pig’s blood being dropped on an unsuspecting prom queen. Without King, we wouldn’t have one of the most iconic and recognizable images in cinema history — Andy Dufresne standing in the rain after escaping from Shawshank prison — nor would we have the enduring horror of Pennywise the Clown, Cujo the slavering St. Bernard, or Kathy Bates’s pitch-perfect stalker fan in Misery .

This is but a sampling born from a staggeringly prolific writing career that’s well on its way to spanning five decades. King has effectively been translating America’s private, communal, and cultural fears and serving them up to us on grisly platters for half a century.

King might have remained a struggling English teacher, but for two women: Tabitha King and Carrie White

Born in 1947, King grew up poor in Durham, Maine, the younger son of a single working mother whose husband, a merchant mariner, abandoned his family when King was still a toddler. A lifelong fan of speculative fiction, King began writing seriously while attending the University of Maine Orono. It was there, in 1969, that he met his wife, Tabitha.

By 1973, King was a high school English teacher drawing a meager $6,400 a year. He had married Tabitha in 1971, and the pair lived in a trailer in Hampden, Maine, and each worked additional jobs to make ends meet. King wrote numerous short stories, some of which were published by Playboy and other men’s magazines, but significant writerly success eluded him.

Tabitha, who’d been one of the first to read Stephen’s short stories in colleges, had loaned Stephen her own typewriter and refused to let him take a higher-paying job that would mean less time to write. Tabitha was also the one who discovered draft pages of what would become Carrie tossed in Stephen’s trash can. She retrieved them and ordered him to keep working on the idea. Ever since, King has continued to pay Tabitha’s encouragement forward. He frequently and effusively blurbs books from established as well as new authors, citing a clear wish to leave publishing better than he found it. Meanwhile, Tabitha is a respected author in her own right , as are both of their sons, Joe Hill and Owen King.

Carrie, which King sold for a $2,500 advance, would go on to earn $400,000 for the rights to its paperback run. The story of a troubled girl who develops powers of telekinesis, Carrie is the ultimate “high school is hell” morality tale. Carrie faces ruthless abuse from her religious mother and bullying from high school classmates, and the book introduces us to two of King’s most prominent themes: small Maine towns with dark underbellies, and main characters written with care and empathy despite being deeply flawed and morally gray — in this case Carrie, her mother, and her bully Sue. The complicated bond between protagonist and antagonist is also a recurring motif in King’s writing.

Two years after Carrie ’s publication, Brian De Palma’s 1976 film adaptation grossed $33 million on a $1.8 million budget, largely on the strength of advance critical praise and word-of-mouth reviews. Buoyed by the subsequent success of Carrie ’s paperback sales, King would go on to churn out six novels ( Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Rage, The Stand, The Long Walk, and The Dead Zone ) over the next six years, establishing a prolificacy that would continue through much of his career.

“The movie made the book and the book made me,” King told the New York Times in 1979.

By 1980 , King was the world’s best-selling author.

It’s taken decades for King’s work to be critically appreciated — in particular for its literary qualities

King’s work has appeared in magazines ranging from the New Yorker to Harper’s to Playboy. The author has influenced literary writers like Haruki Murakami and Sherman Alexie along with genre creators like the producers of Lost . And he’s won virtually every major horror, mystery, science fiction, and fantasy award there is. But King also spent decades being written off by both the horror writing community and the literary mainstream.

King once referred to critics perceiving him to be “a rich hack,” a perception that bears out in horror writer David Schow’s offhand 1997 description of him as “comparable to McDonald’s” — intended to characterize King as horror’s pedestrian mainstream. When a 1994 King short story , his first to be published in the New Yorker, won the prestigious O. Henry Award, Publishers Weekly declared it to be “one of the weaker stories in this year’s [O. Henry Award] collection.”

“The price he pays for being Stephen King is not being taken seriously,” one of King’s collaborators told the LA Times in 1995.

The critical disparagement of King often went hand in hand with genre shaming. In a 1997 60 Minutes interview , Lesley Stahl questioned King’s literary tastes, getting him to admit that he’d never read Jane Austen and had only read one Tolstoy novel. In response, King grinned that he had, instead, read every novel Dean Koontz had ever written — Dean Koontz being a notoriously lowbrow writer of thrillers. (That same year, the New York Times would compliment the breadth of King’s literary knowledge even while panning his epic best-seller The Stand. )

“Here you are, one of the best- selling authors in all of history,” Stahl continued, “and the critics cannot find much that they like in your work.”

To this, King replied, “All I can say is — and this is in response to the critics who’ve often said that my work is awkward and sometimes a little bit painful — I know it. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.”

While King’s self-deprecation may have been a mark of respect for his critics, those critics were on the cusp of being proven wrong. This was in large part thanks to the sleeping giant that became The Shawshank Redemption, which drew popular attention to the fact that King could do more than “just” write horror, and helped kick-start critical reassessment of him and his work.

The film, written by longtime Stephen King adapter Frank Darabont, is based on one of King’s most literary works, a 1982 novella about an agonizingly slow prison break. Shawshank flopped when it opened in theaters in 1994, but it was nominated for seven Academy Awards — more than any other King adaptation. As indicated by its long reign as the highest-ranked film on IMDB , it has gone on to become one of the most popular and beloved films ever made.

By 1998, under the oversight of a new publisher, King’s books were actively being marketed as literary fiction for the first time. From the mid-’90s through today, King’s critical and cultural reputation has advanced as thoroughly as it stagnated before.

In a 2013 CBS interview , we see the marked difference with which contemporary media has come to view King’s work: “You used to always get slotted in the Horror genre,” interviewer Anthony Mason commented to King. “And I think it was sort of a way of some people, I think, not treating you all that seriously as a writer.”

“I don’t know if I want to be treated seriously per se, because in the end posterity decides whether it’s good work or whether it’s lasting work,” King replied, secure in his position as one of the best-loved authors of the 20th century.

But evolving cultural views on genre fiction aside, King’s writing has always displayed significant literary qualities, particularly ongoing literary themes that have shaped how we understand horror as well as ourselves.

The horror of Stephen King doesn’t lie with the external but with the internal

In his award-winning 1981 collection of essays on horror, Danse Macabre , King names three emotions that belong to the realm of the horror genre: terror, horror, and revulsion. He argues that while all three emotions are of equal value to the creation of horror, the “finest” and most worthy is terror because it rests on the creator’s ability to command audiences’ imaginations. Drawing on numerous writers before him, he posits that never fully revealing the source of the horror is the best way to effect terror upon the mind.

King argues that the art of making us terrified about what lies around the corner is all about getting us to identify with the characters who are experiencing the terror. If we don’t care about the characters, then it won’t matter how many jump scares you fling at the audience — we have to be at least a little invested in their fate.

As such, King spends a great deal of time on characters’ interior lives, often jumping between different point-of-view characters throughout his novels. (For example, Salem’s Lot , It , and The Stand are all stories with large ensemble casts and multiple shifting points of view.) But every characterization, even a minor one, is rich with detail; even if you just met a new character, you can bet that by the time he or she meets a grisly ending a few pages later, you’ll have a deep understanding of who that character is.

King’s novels often contain deeply flawed yet sympathetic central characters surrounded by large ensemble casts full of equally flawed people, each struggling to interact and grapple with larger forces. By framing his stories within an interwoven web of narrative perspectives and juxtaposed character experiences, King is able to generate a feeling of interconnectivity, as well as explore the various literary themes that stretch throughout his multidimensional universe, including but not limited to:

1) Nerdboys to men

King credits his absentee father for bequeathing him a love of horror via a stash of pulp novels King discovered as a boy. But another lasting legacy of this truncated relationship was King’s ongoing preoccupation with relationships between men and boys, the process of attaining manhood, and the bridge between boyhood and adulthood.

We see these bonds take a variety of shapes and meaning throughout his work, ranging from comforting ( Salem’s Lot ) to destructive ( Apt Pupil ) to ambiguous ( The Shining ). King explores male intimacy through these relationships, frequently challenging typical masculine forms of expression. He can do this because his boys and men tend to be nerds and outcasts who already exist outside traditional masculine norms. The bookish nerdy kid was relatively uncommon in mainstream adult fiction before King came along; now we recognize such characters as hallmarks of genre literature.

To King, the social markers that make kids outcasts in school — from being nerdy to being overweight to enduring acne — also make them uniquely outfitted to be conduits for readers’ social anxieties and fears. Because deep down, we’re all reliving the social terrors of school every day of our lives.

2) Creative struggles and struggles with addiction

King frequently writes about the process of creation, often by exploring an artist who’s been prevented from creating in some way. The main characters of Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half, Bag of Bones , 1408, and numerous short stories are all writers who’ve been in some way prevented from writing or thwarted in their creative efforts. Many of these and other artistic characters mirror King’s own real-life experiences; for example, the artist at the center of 2008’s Duma Key reflects his physical struggle to write following a highly publicized 1999 injury that made writing difficult for several years.

King has also been open throughout his career about his struggles with addictions ranging from alcohol to drug abuse to painkillers, and many of his main characters likewise struggle with addiction — either directly, in books like The Shining and Revival , or indirectly: The villain of Misery , Annie Wilkes, is a metaphor for cocaine itself.

3) World building through geography and repeated characters

Most people associate Stephen King with Maine and Maine with Stephen King. This is because King almost exclusively writes and sets his stories there. The town of Derry, for example, where It lives, is based on Bangor, Maine. Numerous fictional King towns, like Derry, Haven (the location of a 2010 TV series based on King’s mystery novel The Colorado Kid ), and Castle Rock, exist in his works alongside real towns.

King uses these locations to increase the verisimilitude of his stories, painting them as all part of the same fictional universe. In stories like It, he borrows liberally from real places and landmarks, highways and scenery, even real street corners. And while Derry is the most famous of King’s fictional towns, Castle Rock is his most frequent destination, showing up over and over in his works.

King doesn’t only reuse places in his stories, however — he also reuses people. One popular villain, a recurring supernatural figure who may or may not be the devil, appears throughout the Stephen King universe in various guises. In The Dark Tower he’s “the Man in Black”; to the lost souls in The Stand, he’s a leader named Randall Flagg. In other stories, he’s a nebulous cast of characters with the initials “R.F.”

Frequently throughout his books, King will signal that his worlds are all connected by having characters meet characters from other books in passing. King characters also are frequently able to travel between narrative landscapes, with or without their awareness ( The Shining, Gerald’s Game, Bag of Bones, Lisey’s Story ). This interconnectivity becomes the central conceit of the Dark Tower , which explicitly links most of King’s stories together in one vast multiverse and explains that there are metaphysical doors between the worlds that allow all this to happen.

King’s work endures not because of its inherent darkness but because of its inherent hope

Part of the reason it may have taken critics so long to reassess King’s work is that “horror” implies the lower rungs of emotion King speaks of in Danse Macabre — the gross-outs and the physical gags that play into our understanding of the genre. But the key to his popularity as a horror novelist, and as a novelist in general, resides not in the darkest moments of his writing, but in his basic belief in humanity’s innate goodness.

He spells out his essentially hopeful, fundamentally romantic worldview in a 1989 interview :

There must be a huge store of good will in the human race. ... If there weren’t this huge store of good will we would have blown ourselves to hell ten years after World War II was over. ... It’s such a common thing, those feelings of love toward your fellow man, that we hardly ever talk about it; we concentrate on the other things. It’s just there; it’s all around us, so I guess we take it for granted ... I believe all those sappy, romantic things: Children are good, good wins out over evil, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I see a lot of the so-called “romantic ideal” at work in the world around us.

It’s this core optimism, more than his ability to scare us, that makes King so beloved by readers. Even in his bleakest works, he retains his ability to empathize deeply with his characters, and to see even his monsters as fundamentally human.

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Stephen (Edwin) King summary

Stephen (Edwin) King , (born Sept. 21, 1947, Portland, Maine, U.S.), U.S. writer of horror stories. Educated at the University of Maine, he became a prolific writer of enormously popular books and, because he was also frequently translated, one of the world’s best-selling writers. His books blend horror, the macabre, fantasy, and science fiction . Carrie (1974), his first published novel and an immediate success, was followed by such works as The Shining (1977), The Dead Zone (1979), Pet Sematary (1983), It (1986), Misery (1987), 11/22/63 (2011), Doctor Sleep (2013), The Outsider (2018), The Institute (2019), and Later (2021). Many of his works were adapted for TV and film.

World History Edu

• Renowned Writers / U.S. History

Stephen King: Biography, Books, and Major Achievements and Awards

by World History Edu · October 7, 2021

Stephen King – history and achievements

An iconic personality of the American literature whose works are known worldwide and have inspired several Hollywood films, Stephen King is a renowned author in the horror genre. The Maine, U.S.-born writer is widely seen as one of the greatest American novelists of the modern era.

King has also gained critical acclaim for his mastery of suspense, sci-fi and fantasy. In his more than half a century writing career, he has produced over 60 novels and amassed several hundreds of short stories. Some of his major works include It , The Shining , and The Dark Tower series.

World History Edu highlights the life and major achievements of Stephen King, a prominent American horror genre writer.

Stephen King: Fast Facts

Born : Stephen Edwin King

Birthday : September 21, 1947

Height : 6’4” (193 cm)

Place of birth : Portland, Maine, United States

Parents : Donald Edwin King and Nellie ruth

Siblings : David King

Education: University of Maine, Lisbon Falls High School, Durham Elementary School

Wife : Tabitha King (married in 1971)

Children : Joe, Naomi, and Owen

Most famous works : Carrie (1974), The Shining (1977), It (1986),  Billy Summers (2021)

Film adaptations: Doctor Sleep (2019), It  (2017),  The Dark Tower (2017), The Shining (1980)

Epithets : The King of Horror

Pseudonyms : Richard Bachman, John Swithen and Beryl Evans

Major awards : Horror Award for Best Adaptation (2005), Deutscher Phantastik Presi For International Author of the Year (2004), Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award (2002), USC Scripter Award (1995)

A prolific author, King’s books and stories have the amazing ability to unleash sheer terror and fear in the readers’ minds.

Birth and early life

Stephen King was born Stephen Edwin King on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine.

He is the second child of Donald Edwin King, a sea merchant and Nellie Ruth, a housewife. His father abandoned his family when Stephen King was just a toddler. His father’s absence caused his family to struggle financially.

Following his parents’ separation, Stephen, his mother and his older brother settled in Stratford, Connecticut, for a while. They would however make a return to Maine when Stephen King was eleven.

Stephen King had a tough childhood as his father, Donald King, abandoned his family when Stephen King was very young.

Education and early writing career

King attended the Durham Elementary School before proceeding to Lisbon Falls High School. It was during his time in high school that he took to writing as a hobby. One of his stories, a 6,000-word story – ‘I Was a Teenage Grave Robber’, was published in Comics Review in 1965.

King also wrote a number of stories in his brother’s newspaper, Dave’s Rag. As he writing skills got better, he started selling the stories he wrote to his neighborhood friends. While still in his teens, he was honored with the Scholastic Art and Writing Award.

After his high school education, King enrolled at the University of Maine in 1966. His first published short story was titled Startling Mystery Stories. In 1970, he graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

While at the University of Maine, Stephen King honed his talents, writing a collection of 18 short stories. He coauthored (with his friend Chris Chesley) a book titled ‘People, Places and Things’. King also contributed to the university’s newspaper.

Fresh out of the university, King struggled to establish himself as a writer, or for that matter to secure a job of his liking. He first worked as an attendant at a laundry shop. Regardless, he never stopped writing in his free time.

Stephen King graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in 1966 before proceeding to the University of Maine to study English.

Writing career

Prior to his writing career lifting off, King was a tutor at a public high school (Hampden Academy), having earned an education certificate after graduating college.

While a high school teacher, King continued to hone his skill sets in writing. His first novel, The Long Walk , did not do so well commercially. Likewise, his novel ‘The Glass Floor’ was met with lukewarm response. The short story was sold to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. The young writer is said to have had an uphill struggle to establish himself as a horror writer.

Carrie (1974)

In 1974, Stephen King published his first successful novel Carrie , a book about a bullied teenage girl, Carrie White, who gained telekinetic power and proceeds to carry out reprisal attacks against all the people who wronged her in her past.

Stephen King’s Carrie, which was published by the publishing house Doubleday, received movie adaptations in 1976 and 2013. The first film adaptation, which was directed by American filmmaker and screenwriter Brian Russell De Palma , stars Sissy Spacek as the main character Carrie White.

Salem’s Lot (1975)

After Carrie, King wrote a number of short stories and a popular novel titled Salem’s Lot in 1975. Salem’s Lot received a number of nominations, including the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987. King has on a number of times described the book, which he dedicated to his daughter Naomi, as his favorite.

Critically acclaimed books by Stephen King

King has published 63  novels and a plethora of short stories in the horror, science-fiction and fantasy genres. Having sold more than 340 million books worldwide, he often ranks as one of the most popular and commercially successful writers of all time, especially in horror story genre.

The following are 5 of his most critically acclaimed books:

Stephen King’s The Shining (1977)

Three years after ‘Carrie’, King published one of his most critically acclaimed novels, The Shining . The book takes readers through the world of young boy with immense psychic abilities as he navigates through the past ills that transpired in a hotel he and his parents were staying in. The Shining basically established King as one of America’s beloved horror genre writers.

Stephen King worked on The Shining (1977) after the death of his mother. The book made him a household name in America.

Pet Sematary (1983)

King’s Pet Sematary , published in 1983, further cemented the Portland, Maine-born writer as a star in the horror genre. The book received a nomination at the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1984.

In the book, King incites a lot of fear in the readers’ minds by beautifully telling the story of a cemetery imbued with magical powers to bring back to life the people that were laid to rest there. Such was the popularity of the Pet Sematary  that movie producers adapted the book into a commercially successful horror movie.

The horror novel It was Stephen King’s 17 th novel. A truly fear-gripping book, It follows the lives of seven children who are traumatized by a devilish being who feeds off the fears of the people it hunts. The 1,138-page novel explores themes of childhood trauma as well as the power of courage over evil. King bagged the British Fantasy Award in 1987 for this novel. He also received a number of nominations, including the World Fantasy Awards.

In 2017, an adapted film of the book titled It did very well at the box office. Two years later, in September 2019, a sequel, It Chapter Two, grossed almost half a billion USD worldwide. Both films were directed by Argentine filmmaker Andrés Muschietti.  The second movie starred the likes of James McAvoy, Bil Hader, and Jessica Chastain.

The Dark Tower series

In the Dark Tower series, Stephen King incorporates many themes from J.R.R. Tolkein’s world and the American Wild West. As at 2021, there are eight books and one short story in the series. The first of book of the series, The Gunslinger , was published in 1982. In the four decades that followed, King published The Drawing of the Three (1987), The Waste Lands (1991), Wizard and Glass (1997), The Little Sisters of Eluria (1998), Wolves of the Calla (2003), Song of Susannah (2004), The Dark Tower (2004), and The wind Through the Keyhole (2012).

In August 2017, a film adaptation of The Dark Tower was released. The film was directed by Nikolaj Arcel. It stars English actor Idris Elba and American multiple-award actor and producer Matthew McConaughey.

Misery (1987)

The 1980s were indeed a very good decade for Stephen King as he penned down major hits after hits. One of such novels was Misery , published in 1987. The novel is about a writer who incurs the wrath of mentally unstable fan over the ending of one of the writer’s books. The antagonist in the novel abducts the writer and gruesomely tortures him into rewriting an ending that he felt the book deserved.

Other accomplishments of Stephen King

Former US President Barack Obama awards King the National Medal of Arts in 2015

Stephen King is an American author famous for his mastery of science-fiction, fantasy and most importantly horror novels. With sales of more 340 million copies worldwide, many of Stephen King’s books have been turned into TV series, films and comic books.

In 2002, he received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was honored for his contribution to the horror genre.

He has been awarded numerous Bram Stoker Awards in categories like Best Novel, Best Fiction Collection, Best Long Fiction, and Best Short Fiction. In 2014, his novel Doctor Sleep won the Best Novel Bram Stoker Award.

In 1980, he received the Balrog Award for Professional Achievement. A year later, in 1981, the British Fantasy Award honored him with a Special Award for his works and achievements.

In 2003, he was honored with the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Awards. The award was established in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association.

He was one of the recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2015. The award was bestowed upon him by then-US president Barack Obama .

King is also a Hugo Award-winner, having claimed the honor for Best Non-Fiction Book in 1982 with his horror novel Danse Macabre (1981).

Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft

What triggered Stephen King’s interest in the horror genre? Growing up, King was avid reader of many novels, particularly horror novels and short stories written by his American sci-fi and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).While in high school, King was an avid reader of EC horror comics.

Subconsciously, his suppressed memory of his friend’s gruesome death after being hit by a train likely influenced King to write horror stories for a living.

Other famous books by Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of many dark writings, including the horror novel ‘It’, a book that has led to hit Hollywood film adaptations directed by Argentine filmmaker Andrés Muschietti.

• ‘The Green Mile’ (1996)
• ‘Black House’ (2001)
• ‘Duma Key’ (2008)
• ‘Joyland’ (2013)
• ‘Doctor Sleep’ (2013)
• ‘Mr. Mercedes’ (2014)
• ‘Billy Summers’ (2021)

Stephen King’s pseudonyms

When the public got to know that ‘Richard Bachman’ was the pen name of Stephen King, there was a huge surge in the sale of Richard Bachman’s books.

Among all the pseudonyms that Stephen King went by, Richard Bachman is perhaps the most famous. He published a great number of short stories and novels as Richard Bachman. And when the public got to know that ‘Richard Bachman’ was the pen name of Stephen King, there was a huge surge in the sale of Richard Bachman’s books, including books like Rage (1977), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982).

It’s been said that the horror writer invented this pen name of his because he believed that the public would be much more open to his works. The name was derived from the combination of writer Richard Stark’s name and musician Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Other aliases used by Stephen King include John Swithen and Beryl Evans. Under the latter pseudonym, he published a children’s book titled Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of the Dark Tower in 2016.

Stephen King’s books that have been adapted into film or TV

Another very interesting fact worth mentioning about Stephen King is the sheer number of Television and film adaptations that his books have received.

Examples of such books that proved to be popular and critically acclaimed film adaptations are The Shining (released in 1980), a movie which starred Hollywood great Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall; It , a classic horror film adaption that has seen remakes in the 2010s; and The Shawshank Redemption , a 1994 movie that starred Morgan Freeman and Tim Robins. The latter movie adaptation, like many others, received several Oscar nominations.

After a brilliant performance in a film adaptation of King’s Misery , Hollywood actress Kathy Bates bagged an Oscar for playing the mentally unstable character Annie Wilkes. Bates starred alongside actor James Caan.

Another very famous movie adaptation of Stephen King book is The Green Mile (1996). Set in the 1930s, the prison-based story follows a death row supervisor and his interactions with a peculiar inmate. Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan distinguished themselves brilliantly in the film adaptation which was released in 1999.

The childhood trauma that likely inspired King to venture into the horror genre

Growing up and reading H.P. Lovecraft and other famous authors of the era possibly influenced King to pursue horror and dark themed works. However, some have claimed that a trauma in King’s early years explains why the author has a strong fascination with horror stories.

When King was child, he saw his friend get hit and killed by a train. The young King came home shocked and lost for words for a period of time. Interestingly, King has stated on a number of times that he had no recollection of the tragic event.

Authors that influenced Stephen King

In addition to American horror and fantasy author H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King has stated that he takes a lot of inspiration from the works of novelists and authors like Don Robertson (1929-1999), Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) and Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947).

Some of Stephen King’s beloved books are Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain , The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie; and McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris.

More Stephen King Facts

In 1985, he wrote some stories for the comics X-Men – Heroes for Hope Staring the X-Men . Other comic authors that contributed to the book include Stan Lee and Chris Claremont. The profits generated from the comics were donated to charity organizations fighting famine in Africa.

Stephen King is big fan of the Boston Red Sox in the Major League Baseball.

Carrie (1974), Stephen King’s first published novel, was intended to be a short story for Cavalier magazine. However, his wife encouraged him not to discard it. King later worked on it and then had it published by Doubleday.  King received about $2,500 advance from the publishing house.

In his early youth, he was arrested and fined $250 for stealing road traffic cones. He used the sale of his short story “The Raft” to pay the fine.

A master of the horror genre, Stephen King has to his credit over 200 short stories.

Stephen King was raised in a Methodist home. He did however lose a great deal of faith in organized religion in his teens. He has hinted at the possibility of being an agnostic.

Stephen King loves music and plays the guitar. Unbeknownst to many, he is part of a music band called Rock Bottom Remainders, which also includes writers Dave Barry and Amy Tan. The music group often sings for charitable initiatives.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Stephen King was known for authoring many novels in a single year. This explains why at some point he chose to use the alias Richard Bachman, as he held the notion that the public wouldn’t be very welcoming to an author that publishes several books in a year.

Under the alias Richard Bachman, Stephen King has published at least seven novels.

In June, 1999, he was badly hit by vehicle while walking on the shoulder of a street in Lovell, Maine. The driver of the vehicle, Bryan Edwin Smith, was charged with aggravated assault and then handed sentence (suspended) of six months in jail. Following the accident and the five operations that were carried out, he underwent intensive physical therapy. The accident seriously affected his ability to sit more than 40 minutes, as he suffered excruciating pain in his hip.

Famous quotes by Stephen King

Stephen King’s honed his talent in his teens. He would go on to author many critically acclaimed horror and science fiction books, selling more than 340 million copies in his distinguished writing career.

Stephen King quotes

Wife and children

Stephen King married Tabitha Spruce in 1971. The marriage produced three children – one daughter and two sons – Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom, and Own Philip.

About a year after graduating from the University of Maine, Stephen King tied the knot with his sweetheart from the university Tabhita Spruce. Together with Tabitha, the undisputed king of horror stories gave birth to three children – two sons and one daughter. His two sons followed in his footstep to become published writers.

Tags: American horror writers Billy Summers Maine-U.S. Richard Bachman Stephen King

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Stephen King Biography: Master of Horror & Fate

The world outside of central Maine almost never got to know Stephen King. If not for his wife’s diligence and her confidence in her husband, the book that launched a million pages might never have come into being. When his wife Tabitha rescued the start of the manuscript of “Carrie” from the trash and insisted her husband finish it, King was working as an English teacher and writing on the side. Tabitha’s judgment was right, Carrie became a smash hit, and Stephen King is one of the world’s most famous and most prolific authors. So what’s the story behind the stories? Let’s delve into the life of Stephen King…

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, the largest city of the mostly rural state that serves as the setting for so many of his famous stories. Stephen was the second son born to Nellie and Donald King, but the family of four soon became a family of three. When Stephen was only two years old, and his brother only four, their father went out, telling the family he was buying a pack of cigarettes. He never returned.

King’s mother worked several jobs, moving with the boys from Maine, going from state to state to find work and a place she could afford to live and raise two boys on her own. But Maine was home, and it’s where the family eventually settled for good.

When they moved back to Maine, the family didn’t have indoor plumbing. And this was the 1960s. King’s life growing up was a far cry from the wealth he has now.

But King didn’t see his childhood as exceptional or out of the ordinary. Though he does acknowledge he’s always liked scary things.

“My childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age I wanted to be scared. I just did. I was scared afterward. I wanted a light on because I was scared. There was something in the closet. My imagination was very active even at a young age.” Stephen King

Some have said that King might also be inspired to write such horrifying stories by a childhood event he doesn’t even remember.

“According to Mom, I had gone off to play at a neighbor’s house—a house that was near a railroad line. About an hour after I left I came back (she said), as white as a ghost. I would not speak for the rest of the day; I would not tell her why I’d not waited to be picked up or phoned that I wanted to come home; I would not tell her why my chum’s mom hadn’t walked me back but had allowed me to come alone. It turned out that the kid I had been playing with had been run over by a freight train while playing on or crossing the tracks (years later, my mother told me they had picked up the pieces in a wicker basket).”

As traumatic as that event must have been, it was not the only explanation for King’s vivid imagination. Friends of the King tell stories about how the family was known for their attention to literature. If their mother couldn’t find – or couldn’t afford – a babysitter, she’d leave her sons alone with the expectation they would read aloud to each other.

King’s love of stories and the written word was fostered from an early age. And, the tradition stuck – King and his wife Tabitha also made their own kids read aloud to each other, and to them. He’d even record them on cassettes to make the family their own collection of audiobooks.

Growing up, King also wrote material for his brother’s newsletter. Called “Dave’s Rag,” they made copies on a mimeograph machine and distributed it to their friends. But King was soon able to move beyond just writing for his sibling’s newsletter. In 1965, when he was still in high school, King was published in Comics Review. The story was right in line with the frightening plots we all know King for today. King had been working as a gravedigger to earn money as a teenager. The job inspired him to write a story called “I Was A Teenage Grave Robber,” and its publication was his first taste of published success. The only downside – he didn’t get paid for the work. His first paid published work didn’t come until he was in college and earned $35 for a story called “The Glass Floor.”

King graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, the high school in the town that later became the setting for portions of the book “11/22/63.” Lisbon Falls was a milltown, and King spent time working in the town’s mill when he was a teenager.

College & Career Start

After graduation, King had aspirations to be a writer. So he headed north to the University of Maine Orono to earn a degree in English Literature. While in college, King was a columnist for the college paper, was outspoken against the Vietnam War, and worked in the college library. That same library is now home to many of King’s papers. It’s also where he met his wife. Tabitha was looking for a book in the stacks, King passed by and struck up a conversation with her, and four years later the literary couple had graduated, had a daughter and was married.

Though King had been writing in college, he was far from being able to support himself and a growing family just by writing. He, Tabitha, and their daughter Naomi were living in a trailer outside of Bangor, and King was working two jobs. He was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and in the summers was pumping gas at the local station while also working shifts at a laundromat. Tabitha took on shifts at a Dunkin’ Donuts, and they struggled to get by. But King always made time to write. Even in the cramped quarters of the family’s trailer, he made a point to set aside space for a writing desk and typewriter. 2,000 words a day was his goal, and that’s a goal he stands by today.

Eventually, King earned a teaching certificate and was able to put his college education to use as a teacher at Hampden Academy. The work still wasn’t what he wanted to be doing, though. It was writing he loved, and writing that he wanted to earn a living from.

Writing has always been his purpose in life, as he explains, “There was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That’s why I do it. I really can’t imagine doing anything else and I can’t imagine not doing what I do.”

Though it took years of effort, his big break did come. After Tabitha fished the beginning of Carrie out of the trash in 1973, King finished the book and sent it off to a publisher.

He wasn’t confident about its chances of being published:

“…my considered opinion was that I had written the world’s all-time loser.”

The family wasn’t doing well financially when he sent Carrie in, and they couldn’t even afford a phone. So he got the news via telegram … he’d be receiving a 2500 dollar advance and Doubleday would be publishing Carrie. Then…even better news. The paperback rights were sold for 400,000 dollars. King could quit teaching and write full-time, and his family would be better off than they had ever dared to imagine.

The book was a smash hit. Within the next year, a million copies were sold and only three years later it was made into an Academy Award winning movie. Stephen King was now officially a writer, and an American celebrity.

But success didn’t mean that King settled into a completely untroubled life. As he kept writing, cranking out books like Misery, Cujo, and Pet Sematary, he was drinking heavily…and he knew he had a problem. King told Rolling Stone:

“Nobody in the house drank but me. My wife would have a glass of wine and that was all. So I went in the garage one night, and the trash can that was set aside for beer cans was full to the top.

It had been empty the week before. I was drinking, like, a case of beer a night. And I thought, “I’m an alcoholic.” That was probably about ’78, ’79. I thought, “I’ve gotta be really careful, because if somebody says, ‘You’re drinking too much, you have to quit,’ I won’t be able to.” He knew he had a problem, but he didn’t stop drinking. In fact, he took it one step further. In the late 70s, King started doing cocaine, using it at night while he was writing. By this time, he and Tabitha had three kids and he knew his addictions were taking a toll both on his family and his writing. He attributes the length of Tommyknockers to cocaine, and looking back has said the book could have been half the length if so much of it hadn’t been inspired purely by his drugged-up energy. He’s also said he doesn’t even remember writing Cujo, so bad was his consumption of alcohol and drugs during the 80s.

“There’s one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don’t say that with pride or shame, only with a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.”

And, The Shining and Misery both carry an undercurrent of reference to his struggles – Jack Torrence is an alcoholic in The Shining, and King has described the antagonist of Misery as essentially the personification of cocaine.

It wasn’t until the late 80s, when Tabitha threatened to leave him and the family staged a dramatic intervention that King cleaned up his act. At the intervention, his family displayed drug paraphernalia and pills they had collected from the trash. King, with the magnitude of his problem laid out in front of his eyes and in front of family and friends, made the decision to get sober. Now, he’s been sober for nearly three decades.

During the 1990s and into the 21st century, King continued to be one of the world’s most prolific and well-known writers. His books spawned movies and mini-series, and over 350 million copies of his books have been sold.

After he became so popular, King took the step of publishing under a pseudonym – Richard Bachman. He wanted to see if he could still get books published and have them sell without his now-famous name splashed across the front. Turns out, he could.

The first book he published under the name Richard Bachman was “Rage.” Set in King’s familiar world of a Maine high school, the book tells the story of a teenager who engages in violent acts at his school. He sets his locker on fire, shoots his algebra teacher, and attacks another student with a wrench. In 1977, it was a figment of King’s imagination. But in the late 1980s and 1990s, the book unfortunately started to resemble actual occurrences at schools across the United States. In 1997, after a student shot eight people at a prayer meeting in Kentucky, it was discovered that he had a copy of Rage in his locker. Disturbed by this, King asked his publisher to take the book out of print. To this day, Rage remains out of print.

Even as his success grew, King remained living in Maine. The family owns a home in Bangor, and a home in Lovell near the lakes for the summer. It was near the home in Lovell that King’s life almost ended in 1999.

King was taking a walk along one of the winding, wooded roads that are so familiar a part of Maine’s landscape. Then, a van smashed into him from behind. King was knocked off the road, into a ditch. Witnesses said he was in a heap and it was clear his leg was broken. His glasses flew off, and landed in the van that hit him.

At the hospital, he underwent multiple surgeries and had to do physical therapy as part of his recovery.

Bryan Smith, the driver who hit King, had a track record of driving infractions, including Operating Under the Influence (OUI) . The King accident was blamed on the Smith’s dog distracting him, causing him to swerve into the author. Smith received a six month jail sentence that was later suspended, and has his license revoked for a year. King was upset … he wanted Smith’s license revoked for life given his history of bad driving.

Only a year after the accident, Smith was found dead in his trailer at the age of 43. He died of a painkiller overdose, and, in a twist of fate that seemed straight out of a King novel – he died on King’s birthday, September 21st.

King sustained horrific injuries in the accident, but he resumed writing only a month after being released from the hospital. He finished the highly regarded “On Writing,” and in 2000 the book was published, but by 2002 King decided that he simply didn’t have the strength to keep writing as he had in the past. Where he had previously sat and typed for hours at a time, it now hurt him to sit for long periods. Addiction had also become part of his life again. After the accident, he took OxyContin to deal with the pain from his injuries and became addicted. As he had a decade earlier, he was able to overcome the addiction and live soberly.

The lure of the written word ultimately proved too strong for his post-accident injuries and struggles, and so King returned to his craft. He has said that he literally needs to write to live. What would happen if he didn’t write?

“’Oh, I’d be dead. I would have drunk myself to death or drugged myself to death or committed suicide or some ***damn thing.”

Since his accident, he’s published dozens of stories and books, including Mr. Mercedes, Duma Key, 11/22/63, and Under The Dome.

A diehard Red Sox fan, like so many of his New England neighbors, Stephen King also co-wrote a book after the Red Sox 2004 World Series win. Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, shared the story of the emotional roller coaster King and so many other Red Sox fans rode throughout the summer and fall of 2004.

In a further display of his eclectic interests and abilities, King dabbles in music. He played guitar for “The Rock Bottom Remainders,” a band whose other members you might recognize too: Amy Tan, Dave Barry, and Matt Groening are only a few of the other celebrities who joined King on stage.

And, he even co-wrote a musical with John Mellencamp. Billed as a “southern Gothic supernatural musical,” Ghost Brothers of Darkland County opened ran for a month at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta.

King is 70 now, but hasn’t run out of ideas…in fact, he and his son Owen just released a co-written book in 2017.

Charitable Work & Political Involvement

King is incredibly wealthy – he writes and sells books at a breathtaking pace. But he doesn’t use his wealth to amass ‘stuff.’ He and Tabitha own three houses – two in Maine and one in Florida. It’s the house in Maine that is most iconic…located in Bangor, it’s a huge old Victorian surrounded by a wrought iron fence decorated with bats. From the outside, the house is exactly where one would expect Stephen King to live. On the inside, it has an indoor swimming pool and a huge underground library.

The houses are extravagant by everyday standards, but they are really the primary way King prefers to spend money on himself and Tabitha.

“I’m not a clothes person. I’m not a boat person. We do have a house in Florida. But we live in Maine, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like a trendy community or anything.”

His houses are beautiful, but they don’t use all of his money … so what does he do with it all?

Well, he gives it away, mostly. Or, he invests in projects that support his interests and his community. A music fan, King has purchased radio stations in Maine. A huge baseball fan, he funded the construction of a Little League Field in Bangor. The field is now known as “Field of Screams,” a tip of the hat to the field’s funder.

Together, he and Tabitha run the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. Libraries and colleges, especially the University of Maine and the Bangor Public Library have benefited from the Kings’ philanthropy. Maine’s historical societies, fire departments, arts organizations, and hospitals have also been beneficiaries of the Kings.

In a 2001 speech at Vassar College, King made his view on generosity and charity clear to his audience.

“Should you give away what you have? Of course you should. I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others, and why not? All you have is on loan, anyway. All you want to get at the getting place, from the Maserati you may dream about to the retirement fund some broker will try to sell you on, none of that is real. All that lasts is what you pass on. The rest is smoke and mirrors.”

In that same speech, he discussed natural resources and his dislike of the George W. Bush administration. With the advent of Twitter in the years to follow, King had an even wider audience to share his political views with. He’s take on President Trump via Twitter, announcing that the President wasn’t allowed to see the new version of “It” when it hit theaters in 2017. He’s also made clear in very profane language…we won’t repeat it here… what he thinks of the President and his administration.

Stephen King is a national figure in his own right. For thirty years he has been affecting the conversation around pop culture. His books sell by the millions, and his movies rake in millions of dollars and win Academy Awards. Growing up, he knew he wanted to write, but he never wanted to do it to achieve the wealth and fame he’s now amassed. His reasoning was much simpler, and it remains his mantra to this day.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

For over three decades, from his home tucked away in the northeast corner of the United States, Stephen King has been able to live out his childhood dream to write for a living. In doing so, he’s brought many of us nightmares – but they’re nightmares the world gladly welcome as we continue to delve into his stories.

Biography of Stephen King

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine. After his father left, King grew up with his mother and brother. The family moved around and then returned to Maine when King was eleven years old. King graduated from high school in 1966 and went on to get his B.A. in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970.

Initially, King supported himself as a high school English teacher; he wrote and published short stories on the side. His first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974 by Doubleday & Co. The success of this novel enabled him to quit his teaching job and dedicate himself to writing full-time. Over the course of his career, King has published over 50 books: novels, collections of short stories, and some nonfiction. King is one of the most prominent authors of horror, suspense, and supernatural fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries. He’s sold an estimated 350 million books worldwide and his name has become synonymous with the genre of horror fiction.

King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts. In 2000, he published the book On Writing which explores the craft of writing and his own writing career. Many of King’s books and stories have been adapted for film and TV and made their way into popular culture. Some notable adaptations include Carrie, It, The Shining , Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile , and Stand By Me.

Stephen King is married to Tabitha King, who is also a novelist. The couple have three children and four grandchildren. The Kings split their time between Florida and Maine.

Study Guides on Works by Stephen King

11/22/63 stephen king.

On 11/22/63 (2011), Stephen King ventured into a new genre: speculative science fiction. Long known as the master of horror, 11/22/63 tells the story of a high school English teacher named Jake Epping who travels back in time to stop the...

• Study Guide

Carrie Stephen King

Published in 1973, Stephen King's Carrie is an epistolary horror novel that takes the form of collected newspaper clippings, letters and diary entries to tell the tale of how bullied misfit Carrie White uses her telekinetic powers to avenge her...

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Stephen King

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a Stephen King novel published in 1999. King novels can—generally speaking—be divided into two elemental types. Some feature large ensemble casts of characters that eschew any obviously singular perspective or...

The Green Mile Stephen King

Stephen King's The Green Mile was originally published in six monthly installments in 1996. It tells the story of a death-row supervisor named Paul Edgecombe, who one day encounters a prisoner with extraordinary powers named John Coffey....

• Lesson Plan

Holly Stephen King

Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors of all time. His second novel of 2023, simply titled Holly , follows the eponymous private investigator named Holly Gibney, who has appeared in several of King's novels. Holly sees Gibney as she sets...

It Stephen King

It is a horror novel, written by Stephen King, and published in 1986 by Viking Press (now Penguin Random House.) The book tells the story of a mythical creature that takes on the form of one’s worst fears, most typically a clown figure known only...

The Long Walk Stephen King

Talent versus luck: this was a question that plagued Stephen King after his initial success as an author. How much of his success was due to talent, and how much due to the cult following he had amassed, and the fact that people bought his books...

The Mist Stephen King

The Mist is a novella penned by the godfather of horror writing, Stephen King. It tells the story of a mist that suddenly envelops the small town of Bridgton in Maine; the mist is not a natural phenomenon but an evil one, and it hides monsters...

Mr. Harrigan's Phone Stephen King

Mr. Harrigan's Phone is a short story by American horror writer Stephen King. It first appeared in a collection of King's previously unpublished work titled If It Bleeds. The collection was published on April 28th, 2020.

King considers the works...

On Writing Stephen King

It is often said that Stephen King's On Writing is arguably one of the most important books that explores the craft of writing. Over the course of this 291 page book, King writes about his career as a best-selling, award-winning writer and how he...

The Shining (1977 Novel) Stephen King

Over the course of his illustrious career, Stephen King has written more than a dozen bonafide classic novels. In fact, prior to the release of The Shining (his third book), he published two classics in the form of Carrie and 'Salem's Lot . The...

Under the Dome Stephen King

Under The Dome is a science fiction novel by Stephen King. The story is set in and around a small town in Maine and is an intricate, complex story with multiple characters that tell how the town's inhabitants deal with being cut off from the...

Stephen King Wiki

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• Living Characters
• Residents of Maine
• Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for his enormously popular horror novels. King was the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

King evinces a thorough knowledge of the horror genre, as shown in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre , which chronicles several decades of notable works in both literature and cinema. He has also written stories outside the horror genre, including the novella collection Different Seasons , The Green Mile , The Eyes of the Dragon , The Stand , Hearts in Atlantis and his magnum opus The Dark Tower series. In the past, Stephen King has written under the pen names Richard Bachman, Beryl Evans (once) , and (once) John Swithen .

He frequently makes a cameo appearances in film adaptations of his novels.

• 1.1 Early life
• 1.2 Becoming famous
• 2.2 Upcoming novels
• 2.3 Short Story Collections
• 2.4 Non-Fiction
• 2.5 Screenplays
• 3 Publishers

Biography [ ]

Early life [ ].

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, was a merchant seaman who was born with the surname Pollock, but changed it to King as an adult. King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury). His parents were married in Scarborough, Maine, on July 23, 1939. Shortly afterwards, they lived with Donald's family in Chicago, Illinois before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. King's parents returned to Maine towards the end of World War II, living in a modest house in Scarborough. When King was two years old, his father left the family. His mother Nellie raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut.

As a child, King witnessed a gruesome accident - one of his friends was caught on a railroad and struck by a train. It has been suggested that this could have been the inspiration for King's dark, disturbing creations, though King himself dismisses the idea.

King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon Falls High School.

Hard at work back in the day.

King has been writing since an early age. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he had seen recently and sold them to his friends. This was not popular among his teachers, and he was forced to return his profits when this was discovered. The stories were copied using a mimeo machine that his brother David used to copy a newspaper, Dave's Rag , which he self-published. Dave's Rag was about local events, and King would often contribute. As a young boy, King was an avid reader of EC's horror comics, which provided the genesis for his love of horror. He loved reading Tales from the Crypt .

His first published story was "In a Half-World of Terror" (re-titled from "I Was a Teen-Age Grave-robber"), published in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama.

From 1966 to 1971, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono. At the university, he wrote a column titled "King's Garbage Truck" in the student newspaper, the Maine Campus . He also met Tabitha Spruce ; they married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He used the experience to write the short story The Mangler and the novella Roadwork (as Richard Bachman ). The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis .

A light hearted moment circa 1983.

After finishing his university studies with a Bachelor of Arts in English and obtaining a certificate to teach high school, King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. During this time, he and his family lived in a trailer. He wrote short stories (most were published in men's magazines) to help make ends meet. As told in the introduction in Carrie , if one of his kids got a cold, Tabitha would joke, "Come on, Steve, think of a monster." King also developed a drinking problem which stayed with him for over a decade.

Becoming famous [ ]

During this period, King began a number of novels. One of his first ideas was of a young girl with psychic powers. However, he grew discouraged, and threw it into the trash. Tabitha later rescued it and encouraged him to finish it. After completing the novel, he titled it Carrie , sent it to Doubleday, and more or less forgot about it. Later, he received an offer to buy it with a $2,500 advance (not a large advance for a novel, even at that time). Shortly after, the value of Carrie was realized with the paperback rights being sold for $400,000 (with $200,000 of it going to the publisher). Soon following its release, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died.

Artist Michael Whelan 's drawing of Rando Thoughtful and his friends disguised as Stephen King.

In On Writing , King admits that at this time he was consistently drunk and that he was an alcoholic for well over a decade. He even admits that he was intoxicated while delivering the eulogy at his mother’s funeral. "I think I did a pretty good job, considering how drunk I was at the time." (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft) He states that he had based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he did not admit it (even to himself) for several years.

Shortly after the publication of The Tommyknockers , King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash on the rug in front of him to show him the evidence of his own addictions: beer cans, cigarette butts, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine), and marijuana. As King related in his memoir, he sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.

King spends winter seasons in an oceanfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Their three children, Naomi King , Joseph King (who appeared in the film Creepshow ), and Owen King , are grown and living on their own.

Both Owen and Joseph are writers; Owen's first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories was published in 2005. The first collection of stories by Joe Hill (Joseph's pen name), 20th Century Ghosts , was published in 2005 by PS Publishing in a very limited edition, winning the Crawford Award for best new fantasy writer, together with the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Collection. Tom Pabst has been hired to adapt Hill's upcoming novel, Heart-Shaped Box , for a 2007 Warner Bros release.

King's daughter Naomi is a Reverend in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Utica, New York, where she lives with her partner.

The following is a complete list of all the novels written and published by Stephen King.

Upcoming novels [ ]

The following is a list of upcoming works being written by Stephen King.

• The Talisman 3
• Lisey's Story Tie-In Edition

Short Story Collections [ ]

The following is a complete list of all the short story collections written and published by Stephen King.

Non-Fiction [ ]

The following is a complete list of all the non-fiction books written and published by Stephen King.

Screenplays [ ]

Publishers [ ]

• New American Library (Signet)
• Simon & Schuster
• Cemetery Dance
• Hard Case Crime
• Stephen King refused to write a sequel until Doctor Sleep .
• Several of Stephen King's novels reference King's works—or film adaptations of those works—as existing within their respective universes. Some also reference King directly. For example, in the novel Thinner —which was written by King under his main pseudonym, Richard Bachman—after protagonist Billy Halleck gives Dr. Mike Houston the explanation for his supernatural weight loss, Houston tells him he "was starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel."
• 2 Overlook Hotel
• 3 Beverly Marsh

The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Stephen King

As one of the most prolific and popular authors of the last half-century,  Stephen King  has defined horror for a generation. With the 1974 publication of his first novel, Carrie , King began a career that has seen the Maine native rise from struggling writer to pop-culture phenomenon whose legions of fans meet him with the kind of adulation that's usually reserved for athletes and pop stars.

Now in his seventies, King shows no signs of stopping. Having written over 60 novels and 200 short stories , King continues to produce work that's both relevant and influential. A true icon in an ever-changing entertainment landscape, his enduring popularity is rare for any celebrity and virtually unheard-of for a novelist. At the core of King's success as a storyteller is his uncanny ability to channel the essence of ordinary life into extraordinary circumstances. This, combined with an uncomplicated prose style, has made him the horror genre's answer to Bruce Springsteen. Popular and populist, Stephen King is a blue-collar boogeyman who delivers frights of the people and for the people.

Nevertheless, King's rise to the top of the literary heap has been anything but easy. From his hand-to-mouth childhood and battle with alcohol and drug addiction to the devastating road accident that nearly claimed his life, the king of horror has suffered more than his share of real-life terrors on the path to wealth and fame. This is the tragic and triumphant true story of Stephen King.

Stephen King's broken home

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947, to Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. According to Lisa Rogak's 2009 biography, Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King , baby Stephen's birth came as a surprise. Years earlier, Ruth King was diagnosed as infertile, which had led the Kings to adopt Stephen's older brother, David Victor, in 1945.

In the early years of their marriage, Ruth and Donald King were constantly on the move. Donald, a merchant marine, was frequently away from home. As Stephen King writes in his 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre , his father was a fan of horror and science fiction stories and had himself unsuccessfully tried his hand at writing. The discovery of a box of his father's books, which included a volume by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft , would prove a revelatory moment for King.

With the end of the World War II , Donald King returned home on a more or less permanent basis and took a job as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. Although Stephen King has virtually no memories of his father, he has described him as "a man with an itchy foot." "As my mother once told me, he was the only man on the sales force who regularly demonstrated vacuum cleaners to pretty young widows at two o'clock in the morning," King says. When the author was only two years old, his father left to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned.     

Stephen King's mother struggled to make ends meet

Faced with  supporting herself, four-year-old David, and two-year-old Stephen  alone, Nellie Ruth King often relied on the kindness of relatives while searching for work. Constantly on the move in the nine years after Donald King's untimely departure, Ruth King (she preferred to be called by her middle name) and her sons found themselves living in Chicago; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and West Depere, Wisconsin.

At times, financial circumstances forced her to leave David and Stephen with extended family for weeks or months at time. In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , Kings writes, "I lived an odd, herky-jerky childhood, raised by a single parent who moved around a lot in my earliest years and who — I am not completely sure of this — may have farmed my brother and me out to one of her sisters for awhile because she was economically or emotionally unable to cope with us for a time. [...] My mom [...] was one of America's early liberated women, but not by choice."

At times, Ruth King was forced to work two or three jobs at a time to put food on the table for her tiny family. When babysitters were too expensive, David and Stephen were left alone reading to each other to pass the time and stay out of mischief. In 1958, the Kings finally found a permanent home in Durham, Maine, when Ruth's sister Ethelyn gave her a house in which to live in exchange for helping care for their ailing parents.

Stephen King's traumatic childhood

Poor health kept young Stephen King home for most of what should have been his first year in elementary school. A case of measles and repeated bouts of strep which led to painful ear infections kept him either in bed or in the doctor's office. The treatments, which involved the repeated lancing of his eardrum, left King traumatized. "The pain was beyond anything I have ever felt since — the only thing close was the first month of recovery after being struck by a van in the summer of 1999," King writes.

When asked if there was an event in his childhood that in some way "warped" him into writing horror stories, Stephen King says he can't point to any particular incident. However, he has related one horrifying story that occurred when he was four. In Danse Macabre , King states, "According to Mom, I had gone off to play at a neighbor's house — a house that was near a railroad line. About an hour after I left, I came back, she said, as white as a ghost. I would not speak for the rest of the day [...] It turned out that the kid I had been playing with had been run over by a freight train while playing on or crossing the tracks [...] My mom never knew if I had been near him when it happened..." Although King claims to have no memory of the incident, novelist and psychiatrist Janet Jeppson told him "...you've been writing about it ever since."

Poverty haunted Stephen King

Although Stephen King  earned a partial scholarship to New Jersey's Drew University , his slim finances kept him in his home state after high school. Instead, he followed his older brother David to the University of Maine at Orono. In college at the height of the Vietnam War , King was active in campus protests and wrote a column for the campus newspaper called "King's Garbage Truck." In his freshman year, he made his first professional sale to Startling Mystery Stories . The short story, titled " The Glass Floor ," earned the struggling student a windfall of $35.

To supplement the weekly stipend of $5 his mother sent him, King took a job in the school's library. There, he met the woman who would become his wife, a history major and aspiring poet named Tabitha Spruce. "He really was literally the poorest college student I've ever met in my life," Tabitha King told Biography  in 2000. "He was wearing [...] cut-off gum rubbers because he couldn't afford shoes."

In 1970, the couple had a child, a daughter named Naomi. After graduation, King and Spruce married and moved to a trailer in Hermon, Maine. While he unsuccessfully searched for a teaching position, King took on a succession of low-paying jobs to make ends meet. The struggling author pumped gas and worked in an industrial laundry. Often depressed, King felt that all he had done with his education was replicate his mother's life.   

The death of Stephen King's mother

As detailed in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , a sickly six-year-old King spent the better part of a year in bed. To pass the time, King read everything he could get his hands on, from classics to comic books. While convalescing, he made his first tentative steps at composing his own tales. King writes, "Imitation preceded creation; I would copy Combat Casey comics word for word [...] sometimes adding my own descriptions..." The budding author eventually worked up the courage to show one of his hybrid creations to his mother. Ruth King was impressed with her son's effort, but when asked if he made the story up on his own, Stephen sheepishly admitted that he had copied it. Admonishing him that he should write his own story — an even better story — Ruth King set her son the path to becoming an author.

Sadly, Nellie Ruth King would not see her son's rise to fame as one of the most popular authors of all time. On  December 18, 1973 , just months before the publication of Carrie , she lost a long and torturous battle with cancer. The circumstances of his mother's death would have a profound effect on Stephen King, and in 1978, he would publish the short story "The Woman in the Room." Told from the perspective of a man who euthanizes his dying mother, King wrote the story as a way of dealing with the complicated emotions he had regarding his mother's illness.

Stephen King's first bestseller nearly wound up in the trash

Stephen King's life would change forever in 1974 with the publication of Carrie . However, the groundbreaking horror novel that launched his career might never have seen the light of day had not a perceptive Tabitha King rescued it from the wastebasket.

The elements of Carrie , the story of an ostracized teen girl who wreaks bloody vengeance on her high school tormentors with her newly discovered psychokinetic powers, came to King in bits and pieces over a number of years before he finally sat down to write it. A King details in  On Writing , after furiously typing out three single-spaced pages, the frustrated would-be author felt he just couldn't get a handle on the narrative. Uncomfortable with writing from the perspective of Carrie's mostly female characters, King gave up and tossed the manuscript in the trash.

Fortunately for King, his sharp-eyed wife retrieved the discarded manuscript, smoothed the crumpled pages out, and read them. Explaining that he was really onto something, Tabitha told him that she could help with the teen girl perspective.

Carrie found a publisher in Doubleday, and King received a modest but much appreciated advance of $2,500 that allowed the struggling family to buy a new car. However, the best was yet to come. On Mother's Day 1973, King found out that the paperback rights for his first novel had sold for the astonishing sum of $400,000 , of which he was guaranteed half. Stephen King's days of financial instability were over. He was now a professional novelist.

Stephen King's ill-fated attempt at directing

By the mid-1980s, Stephen King was a household name, a millionaire, and the undisputed master of literary horror. Although many of his works had been adapted for the screen, few had met with King's approval. A Stephen King novel was money in the bank, but a film based on a Stephen King novel was a consistently dodgy proposition.

King,  a lifelong fan of cinema , finally got his chance to step behind the camera in 1986 thanks to Italian movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis. According to Slash Film , King and De Laurentiis had hit it off during the production of the film Cat's Eye , an anthology of three short stories. De Laurentiis had given King the rare opportunity to adapt his own work for the screenplay and recognized his talent as a visual storyteller. When King expressed an interest in directing, De Laurentiis gave the bestselling author a shot.

Unfortunately, King's directorial debut would prove disastrous. Maximum Overdrive , based on King's short story "Trucks" about sentient machines taking over the Earth, was a critical and box office failure and an ultimately frustrating experience for the author, who was deep in the throes of cocaine addiction and alcoholism during the film's production. "The problem with that film is that I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and I really didn't know what I was doing," King tells Tony Magistrale, author of Hollywood's Stephen King . Nevertheless, Maximum Overdrive has since garnered a reputation as a cult classic .

A crazed fan broke into Stephen King's home

In 1991, Stephen King experienced a real-life horror story so terrifying that it could have been ripped from the pages of one of his books. On the morning of Saturday, April 20, 1991, King's wife, Tabitha, discovered 26 year-old Erik Keene of San Antonio, Texas, in their stately Victorian home in Bangor, Maine. Keene was carrying a backpack which he claimed contained a bomb. Mrs. King was alone in the house at the time and fled to a neighbor's home to call the police. When authorities arrived, they discovered Keene in the Kings' attic brandishing what appeared to be a homemade detonator. A police dog caused Keene to drop the device, which was discovered to be fake.

Although the police initially couldn't establish a motive for the break-in, Keene revealed to the press that he intended to exact revenge on King for allegedly stealing the plot of his 1987 bestseller Misery from Keene's aunt. After serving 127 days of a two-year suspended sentence, Keene was extradited back to Texas for a parole violation.

As reported by the  Bangor Daily News , King and his wife have dealt with a number of unhinged fans and trespassers, including a California man named Steven Lightfoot, who asserted that the author was the real assassin of Beatle John Lennon , and Bretislav Bures , a Czech national who was arrested for stalking after leaving disturbing notes in King's mailbox and confronting his wife, Tabitha, on the street near their home.

Stephen King faces his demons

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , Stephen King writes that he took his first drink at age 18 on a high school trip to New York and Washington D.C. As is the case with most first-time drinkers, he overdid it and wound up violently ill. Still, alcohol became a regular habit from that moment on. "Alcoholics build defenses like the Dutch build dikes," King writes. " I spent the first twelve years or so of my married life assuring myself that I 'just liked to drink.'" However, when Maine enacted a returnable bottle law in the early 1980s, seeing the sheer number of empties in his recycling made King realize he had a problem. Yet, he wouldn't be able to address it for several more years.

By 1985, King had added an addiction to cocaine to his drinking problem. While on the drug, he would stay up late with his pulse racing dangerously as he wrote. At last, King's wife staged an intervention. Gathering friends and family, Tabitha King confronted the author with his substance abuse and delivered an ultimatum: Get clean or get out.  Wisely, King chose rehab and has been clean and sober since the late 1980s .

An accident nearly cost Stephen King his life

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 19, 1999, Stephen King was taking his daily walk along a secluded country road near his home in North Lovell, Maine. While walking against traffic on Route 5, King was struck by a light blue minivan driven by 43-year-old former construction worker Bryan Smith. According to The Guardian , Smith had taken his eyes off the road while trying to get control of one of his dogs that was rummaging through his beer cooler.

Hurled over the van, King struck his head on the windshield and landed in a ditch 14 feet away from the point of impact. Smith assumed he had struck a deer until he noticed King's bloody glasses on his front seat.

King suffered a concussion, a shattered hip and pelvis, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured thigh bone. Had he not quickly pivoted to the left as the van bore down him, he very well could have been killed on impact.

School shootings led Stephen King to pull a book from print

Stephen King's 1977 novel Rage , written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, has a long and unfortunate connection to school violence . The story of a disturbed high school student who takes a classroom hostage at gunpoint, King has described Rage , written in 1965 while the author was still in high school, as a book of "unpleasant truths."

Rage has been connected to incidents going back to at least 1988, and King decided to have the book removed from circulation. In his 2013 essay " Guns ," written in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, King elaborates that although he doesn't believe the novel is the sole cause of the incidents, it may have acted as a "possible accelerant." "I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do," King writes.

Ironically, Rage has become a collector's item. Since being pulled from print, first editions regularly sell for exorbitant sums .

Stephen King's waning eyesight

Severely nearsighted since childhood , Stephen King has worn what he describes as "Coke-bottle glasses" for most of his life. However in a 1998 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes , King revealed a much more serious threat to his eyesight than his lifelong myopia. "I do have a retinal problem. It's called macular degeneration," King told correspondent Lesley Stahl. "Blindness is the ultimate result, but right now, I'm fine. I just don't see very well."

Related to aging, macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss and affects more than ten million Americans. The progressive condition affects the central portion of the retina, causing a loss of vision in the center of the eye while leaving peripheral vision largely unaffected. "That's the part I want to keep as a man and as a writer — what I see out of the corners," King jokes. However, the writer has since revealed on his official website that, while he does have a genetic predisposition to the condition he, as yet, isn't experiencing symptoms.

This Lost Stephen King Novel Was Pulled from Circulation for this Tragic Reason

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Stephen King is no stranger to controversy. He is quick to speak his mind, which sometimes lands him in hot water. The author has famously shared spicy opinions about the work of other creators, from Stanley Kubrick to Quentin Tarantino . But the controversy at hand has nothing to do with cutting remarks or shade-throwing. No, the backlash from his novel Rage is a different type of controversy entirely.

The 1977 tome, which King published under the pen name Richard Bachman, is inspired by the author’s feelings of alienation and painful experiences as a high school student. King’s inspiration for the novel is pretty universal. Almost everyone who has attended high school understands the complex array of emotions associated with the social caste system and the anguish that accompanies trying to fit in.

Sadly, King’s fictional account of an isolated youngster who channels his pain by shooting a teacher and taking his classmates hostage spoke to a handful of vulnerable readers in unexpected ways. Business Insider reports that multiple young people took actual inspiration from the novel by bringing a firearm to school and perpetrating acts of violence against teachers and classmates. The first documented case of violence believed to be inspired by the time was perpetrated by Jeffrey Lyne Cox in 1988. Several more tragic incidents followed over the years.

Disturbing Parallels

In 1997, Michael Carneal shot 8 classmates (three of whom were fatally wounded) at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky. Authorities discovered the shooter had a copy of Rage in his locker. This was the final straw for King. Recognizing that the novel was a “possible accelerant” of school violence, the author petitioned the publisher to pull the plug on the book. The publisher agreed, and the novel went out of print in the late ‘90s. Rage continued to be offered as part of the collection, The Bachman Books , but the controversial novel was eventually pulled from that compilation as well. Remaining copies of the book now fetch outrageous sums on the secondary market.

It’s important to note that King wrote Rage at a time before school shootings were a reality. He surely never imagined his words would inspire real-life violence. But the author absolutely did the right thing when he asked the publisher to cease production.

Many theorize that the sympathetic portrayal of the lead character, Charlie, is what the misguided individuals who took ‘inspiration’ from the book connected with. On that basis, it’s good to know the tome has been pulled from circulation and isn’t likely to inspire further acts of violence.

Categorized: News

The Monkey: Stephen King Adaptation From Longlegs Director Gets First Teaser

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The first teaser trailer has been released for The Monkey , a feature film based on a Stephen King story. It serves as the next film from director Osgood Perkins, who's been riding a recent wave of success with the Nicolas Cage film Longlegs .

Shared by Neon on Monday, the teaser showcases a sneak peek at the drumming monkey toy along with a bloodied Theo James , who stars in the film's lead role. Circus-like music plays all along as the monkey pounds on its drum, touting how the film is produced by horror vet James Wan. The teaser also highlights the release date, which is Feb. 21, 2025 . The video can be watched below.

Stephen King-Approved Thriller Earns Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

A new thriller has earned the approval of Stephen King along with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score with its early reviews.

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins , The Monkey is produced by Wan alongside Michael Clear, Dave Caplan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Chris Ferguson. Joining Theo James ( The Gentlemen ) in the cast are Tatiana Maslany ( She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ), Elijah Wood ( Lord of the Rings ), Rohan Campbell ( Halloween Ends ), Christian Convery ( Sweet Tooth ), and Sarah Levy ( Schitt's Creek ).

James Wan Finally Helps Bring a Stephen King Story to Life

"Stephen King is the godfather of the horror genre ," Wan said in a statement when the project was announced. "He had a huge influence on me as a child and throughout my career, and it’s always been a dream to help bring one of his stories to life. The Monkey is a personal favorite, with its simple, iconic and incredibly marketable conceit. And I can’t imagine anyone better than a visionary and lifelong genre fan like Osgood to bring this to life.”

Mark Hamill and Judy Greer Join Upcoming Stephen King Adaptation

Stars Mark Hamill and Judy Greer join the cast of an upcoming Stephen King adaptation produced by Lionsgate. 

Per Deadline , a synopsis for the film reads, "When twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths starts occurring all around them. The brothers decide to throw the monkey away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years. But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them. Additional casting is underway."

The original short story was first published in 1980, though a revised version was later included in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew . Up to this point, The Monkey had never been given a proper feature film adaptation, though King co-wrote an episode of The X-Files (called "Chinga") which had a similar story about a cursed doll, but it wasn't a monkey. The 1984 horror film The Devil's Gift also focused on a haunted cymbal-banging monkey toy, drawing comparisons to The Monkey , though King was not involved, nor was it officially ever declared to be an adaptation.

The Monkey will be released in movie theaters on Feb. 21, 2025.

Source: Neon

Stephen King

Stephen King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. He is also a screenwriter, director and occasional actor.

tephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. He made his first professional short story sale in 1967 to Startling Mystery Stories. In the fall of 1971, he began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co., accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published over 50 books and has become one of the world's most successful writers. King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to the American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts.

Stephen lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.