Stephen King

King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, worked as a travelling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II. He was born with the surname Pollock and later changed it to King. King's mother was Nellie Ruth King, née Pillsbury. His parents married in Scarborough, Maine, on July 23, 1939. The family lived with Donald King's relatives in Chicago before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. They later returned to Maine and lived in Scarborough. King is of Scots-Irish descent.

When King was two, his father left the family. His mother subsequently raised King and his older brother David. The family moved frequently and lived with relatives in Chicago, Illinois; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was 11, the family moved to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. She later worked as a caregiver at a residential facility for people with intellectual disabilities.

King began writing as a child, initially copying comic-book panels and creating his own stories. He has also cited films as an early influence. He has described the 1942 animated film "Bambi" as the first horror film he saw, recalling being frightened by the forest-fire sequence. His early reading included children's literature and horror fiction. He has identified Richard Matheson's "The Shrinking Man" as one of his favourite books from his childhood.

King has also cited "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding as an important influence. He attended Durham Elementary School and entered Lisbon High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine, in 1962. He contributed to Dave's Rag, a newspaper produced by his brother, and sold stories to friends. His first independently published story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", appeared in four instalments of the fanzine Comics Review in 1965. He also worked as a sports reporter for Lisbon's Weekly Enterprise.

In 1966, King entered the University of Maine at Orono on a scholarship. He wrote for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, and studied under professors Edward Holmes and Burton Hatlen. He participated in a writing workshop organised by Hatlen, where he met Tabitha Spruce. King graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. His daughter Naomi Rachel was born that year. King and Spruce married in 1971.

King sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. After graduating, he obtained a teaching certificate but was initially unable to secure a teaching position. He continued selling short stories to magazines, including Cavalier. Some of these early stories were later collected in "Night Shift" (1978). In 1971, King became an English teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued writing short stories and developing ideas for novels, including the unpublished anti-war novel "Sword in the Darkness".

King's first published novel, "Carrie", was released in 1974. The novel originated as a short story intended for Cavalier. King initially discarded the first three pages, but his wife, Tabitha, retrieved them and encouraged him to continue. The novel concerns Carrie White, a high-school student with telekinetic abilities and a difficult relationship with her religious mother.

While teaching "Dracula" to high-school students, King developed the idea for "'Salem's Lot", which explores the arrival of vampires in a small New England town. Around the time of its publication, King's mother died of uterine cancer. King subsequently moved with his family to Boulder, Colorado. While there, he visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which provided inspiration for "The Shining". The novel concerns an alcoholic writer and his family, who become caretakers of an isolated hotel during the winter.

King and his family returned to Auburn, Maine, in 1975. He completed "The Stand", an apocalyptic novel concerning a pandemic and its aftermath. In 1977, the family briefly travelled to England before returning to Maine, where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. His courses on horror contributed to the development of his nonfiction book "Danse Macabre". In 1979, he published "The Dead Zone", a novel about a man who develops the ability to see aspects of the future. It was the first of King's novels to be set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine.

In 1982, King published "Different Seasons", a collection of four novellas with a stronger emphasis on drama than his earlier horror fiction. Three of the novellas were adapted into films: "The Body" became "Stand by Me" (1986), "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" became "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994), and "Apt Pupil" became "Apt Pupil" (1998). "The Breathing Method" received the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.

King experienced problems with alcohol and drug addiction during the 1980s. He later stated that he had little recollection of writing "Cujo" (1981). In 1983, he published "Christine", concerning a teenage boy and a supernatural 1958 Plymouth Fury. He also published "Pet Sematary", which he had originally written in the late 1970s. The novel was inspired in part by the death of his daughter's cat and a nearby pet cemetery. It concerns a burial ground capable of resurrecting the dead.

In 1985, King published "Skeleton Crew", a collection of short fiction that included "The Reach" and "The Mist". His experiences and interests in horror fiction contributed to the development of "It", which concerns seven children who are terrorised by an entity capable of taking the form of their fears. The novel is set primarily in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. "It" received the August Derleth Award in 1987.

King published several novels in 1987. "The Eyes of the Dragon" is a high fantasy novel originally written for his daughter. He followed it with "Misery", concerning a writer who is held captive by a fan after being injured in a car accident. The novel shared the inaugural Bram Stoker Award with Robert R. McCammon's "Swan Song". King also published "The Tommyknockers", a science-fiction novel involving an alien object and its effects on the inhabitants of a small town. Following the publication of the novel, King's family arranged an intervention concerning his substance abuse, after which he sought treatment.

In 1989, King published "The Dark Half", about an author whose literary alter ego appears to take on a life of its own. King subsequently acknowledged a connection between the novel and his use of the Richard Bachman pseudonym.

In 1990, King published "Four Past Midnight", a collection of four novellas linked by themes involving time. In 1991, he published "Needful Things", a novel set in Castle Rock. In 1992, he published "Gerald's Game" and "Dolores Claiborne", two novels with thematic links involving a solar eclipse. "Dolores Claiborne" is narrated as an extended monologue by its title character.

In 1994, King's short story "The Man in the Black Suit" was published in The New Yorker. It received the O. Henry Award in 1996. Also in 1996, King published "The Green Mile", originally issued as a serial novel in six parts. In 1998, he published "Bag of Bones", his first novel published by Scribner. The novel concerns a recently widowed novelist and received both the Bram Stoker Award and the August Derleth Award.

In 1999, King published "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", about a girl who becomes lost in a forest and listens to Boston Red Sox radio broadcasts. He also published "Hearts in Atlantis", a collection of linked novellas and short stories concerning the experiences of characters growing up during the 1960s. Later that year, King was seriously injured after being struck by a van while walking.

In 2000, King published "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft", which combines memoir with advice on writing. He also published "Riding the Bullet", which was distributed electronically and became one of the earliest widely distributed mass-market electronic books. He subsequently began publishing "The Plant", an unfinished epistolary novel, online in instalments using a pay-what-you-want model. Publication ceased before the novel was completed.

In 2002, King published "From a Buick 8", which returned to themes associated with "Christine". In 2005, he published "The Colorado Kid" through the Hard Case Crime imprint. In 2006, he published "Cell", concerning a mysterious signal transmitted through mobile phones, and "Lisey's Story", about the widow of a novelist. In 2007, King served as guest editor of the annual anthology "The Best American Short Stories".

In 2008, King published "Duma Key", his first novel set in Florida, and "Just After Sunset", a collection of short fiction. In 2009, he became a writer for Fangoria. His novel "Under the Dome" was also published that year and reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

In 2010, King published "Full Dark, No Stars", a collection of four novellas concerned with retribution. In 2011, he published "11/22/63", a novel about a time portal leading to 1958 and an English teacher who attempts to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 2013, he published "Joyland", his second book for Hard Case Crime, followed later that year by "Doctor Sleep", a sequel to "The Shining".

King published "Mr. Mercedes" in 2014. The crime novel concerns a retired police officer who is taunted by a murderer. It received the Edgar Award for Best Novel. King subsequently published "Revival", a horror novel. "Mr. Mercedes" was later developed into a trilogy, followed by "Finders Keepers" in 2015 and "End of Watch" in 2016.

In 2018, King published "The Outsider", featuring the character Holly Gibney, as well as the novella "Elevation". In 2019, he published "The Institute".

In 2020, King published "If It Bleeds", a collection of four novellas. In 2021, he published "Later", his third book for Hard Case Crime. In 2022, he published the fantasy novel "Fairy Tale". "Holly", a novel centred on Holly Gibney, was published in 2023. "You Like It Darker", a collection of 12 short stories, was published in 2024. The collection contains previously published and previously unpublished stories and reached number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list. In 2025, King published "Never Flinch", another novel featuring Holly Gibney.

King has published several works under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The five early novels published under the name were "Rage" (1977), "The Long Walk" (1979), "Roadwork" (1981), "The Running Man" (1982) and "Thinner" (1984). King adopted the pseudonym partly because publishers had concerns about releasing more than one book by the same author in a year. He later said that the pseudonym allowed him to publish works that differed from his established style.

The name Bachman was derived from the rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, while Richard was chosen as a reference to the crime writer Donald E. Westlake, who used the pseudonym Richard Stark. King's Bachman novels generally have darker and more pessimistic themes than many of his works published under his own name.

In 1985, Washington, D.C., bookseller Steve Brown identified similarities between King's writing and that of Bachman and located publisher records at the Library of Congress identifying King as the author of "Rage". King subsequently announced that Bachman had died of "cancer of the pseudonym", effectively ending the use of the name as a secret identity. King had originally intended to publish "Misery" under the Bachman name before his identity was discovered.

When "Desperation" was published in 1996 under King's name, the companion novel "The Regulators" was attributed to Richard Bachman and presented as a previously discovered manuscript. In 2006, King announced that he had found another Bachman novel, "Blaze", which was published in 2007. The manuscript had been kept at the University of Maine for many years, and King revised the original 1973 text before publication.

King has used other pseudonyms. The short story "The Fifth Quarter" was published under the name John Swithen in Cavalier in 1972. "Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of The Dark Tower" was published in 2016 under the pseudonym Beryl Evans and illustrated by Ned Dameron. The book is based on a fictional work that appears in King's "The Dark Tower" series.

King began developing "The Dark Tower" series in the late 1970s. The series follows Roland Deschain, a gunslinger who pursues the mysterious "Man in Black" through an alternate universe combining elements of fantasy and the American Old West. The first story, "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger", was initially published in five instalments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1977 and 1981. The series ultimately expanded into an eight-volume sequence published between 1978 and 2012.