Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author. Dubbed the "King of Horror",[2] he is widely known for hishorror novels and has also explored other genres, among themsuspense,crime, science-fiction, fantasy, andmystery.[3] Though known primarily for his novels, he has written approximately200 short stories, most of which have been published in collections.[4]
King was born inPortland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a traveling vacuum salesman after returning fromWorld War II, was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing it to King as an adult.[10] King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury).[11] His parents were married inScarborough, Maine, on July 23, 1939. They lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving toCroton-on-Hudson, New York.[12] King's parents returned to Maine towards the end ofWorld War II, living in a modest house in Scarborough. He is ofScots-Irish descent.[13]
When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago, Illinois; Croton-on-Hudson;West De Pere, Wisconsin;Fort Wayne, Indiana;Malden, Massachusetts; andStratford, Connecticut.[14] When King was 11, his family moved toDurham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. After that, she became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged.
King says he started writing when he was "about six or seven, just copying panels out of comic books and then making up my own stories ... Film was also a major influence. I loved the movies from the start. So when I started to write, I had a tendency to write in images because that was all I knew at the time."[15] Regarding his interest in horror, he says "my childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did."[16] He recalls showing his mother a story he copied out of a comic book. She responded: "I bet you could do better. Write one of your own." He recalls "an immense feeling ofpossibility at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given the key to open any I liked."[17] King was a voracious reader in his youth: "I read everything fromNancy Drew toPsycho. My favorite wasThe Shrinking Man, byRichard Matheson—I was 8 when I found that."[18]
King's aunt Gert paid him aquarter for every story he produced; his surviving earliest works include "Jhonathan and the Witchs", which he wrote at the age of nine.[19]
King asked abookmobile driver, "Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She gave him a copy ofLord of the Flies, which proved formative: "It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands—strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, 'This is not just entertainment; it's life or death.'... To me,Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels arefor, why they are indispensable."[20] He attended Durham Elementary School and enteredLisbon High School inLisbon Falls, Maine, in 1962.[1] He contributed toDave's Rag, the newspaper his brother printed with amimeograph machine, and later sold stories to his friends. His first independently published story was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over four issues of thefanzineComics Review in 1965. He was a sports reporter for Lisbon'sWeekly Enterprise.
In 1966, King entered theUniversity of Maine at Orono on a scholarship. While there, he wrote for the student newspaper,The Maine Campus, and found mentors in the professors Edward Holmes andBurton Hatlen.[21][22][23] King participated in a writing workshop organized by Hatlen, where he fell in love with Tabitha Spruce.[22] King graduated in 1970 with aBachelor of Arts in English, and his daughter Naomi Rachel was born that year. King and Spruce wed in 1971.[1] King paid tribute to Hatlen: "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called 'the language pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.' That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim."[22]
Career
Beginnings
King sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", toStartling Mystery Stories in 1967.[1] After graduating from the University of Maine, King earned a certificate to teach high school but was unable to find a teaching post immediately. He sold short stories to magazines likeCavalier. Many of these early stories were republished inNight Shift (1978). In 1971, King was hired as an English teacher atHampden Academy inHampden, Maine.[1] He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels, including theanti-war novelSword in the Darkness, still unpublished.[24]
1970s:Carrie toThe Dead Zone
Portraits from the first edition ofCarrie (1974) (left) andThe Shining (1977) (right)
King recalls the origin of his debut,Carrie: "Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together." It began as a short story intended forCavalier; King tossed the first three pages in the trash but his wife,Tabitha, recovered them, saying she wanted to know what happened next. She told him: "You've got something here. I really think you do."[25] He followed her advice and expanded it into a novel.[26] PerThe Guardian,Carrie "is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent—and then, as the novel progresses, developing—telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more."[27]The New York Times noted that "King does more than tell a story. He is a schoolteacher himself, and he gets into Carrie's mind as well as into the minds of her classmates. He also knows a thing or two about symbolism — blood symbolism especially."[28]
King was teachingDracula to high school students and wondered what would happen if Old Worldvampires came to a small New England town. This was the germ of'Salem's Lot, which King called "Peyton Place meetsDracula".[29] King's mother died from uterine cancer around the time 'Salem's Lot was published.[1] After his mother's death, King and his family moved toBoulder, Colorado. He paid a visit to theStanley Hotel inEstes Park which provided the basis forThe Shining, about an alcoholic writer and his family taking care of a hotel for the winter.[15]
King's family returned toAuburn, Maine in 1975, where he completedThe Stand, an apocalyptic novel about a pandemic and its aftermath. King recalls that it was the novel that took him the longest to write, and that it was "also the one my longtime readers still seem to like the best".[30] In 1977, the Kings, with the addition ofOwen Philip, their third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, and King began teaching creative writing at theUniversity of Maine.[1] The courses he taught on horror provided the basis for his first nonfiction book,Danse Macabre. In 1979, he publishedThe Dead Zone, about an ordinary man gifted withsecond sight. It was the first of his novels to take place inCastle Rock, Maine. King later reflected that withThe Dead Zone, "I really hit my stride."[31]
King struggled with addiction throughout the decade and often wrote under the influence of cocaine and alcohol; he says he "barely remembers writing"Cujo.[39] In 1983, he publishedChristine, "A love triangle involving 17-year-old misfit Arnie Cunningham, his new girlfriend and a haunted 1958Plymouth Fury."[40] Later that year, he publishedPet Sematary, which he had written in the late 1970s, when his family was living near a highway that "used up a lot of animals" as a neighbor put it. His daughter's cat was killed, and they buried it in a pet cemetery built by the local children. King imagined a burial ground beyond it that could raise the dead, albeit imperfectly. He initially found it too disturbing to publish, but resurrected it to fulfill his contract withDoubleday.[41]
In 1985, King publishedSkeleton Crew, a book of short fiction including "The Reach" andThe Mist. He recalls: "I would be asked, 'What happened in your childhood that makes you want to write those terrible things?' I couldn't think of any real answer to that. And I thought to myself, 'Why don't you write a final exam on horror, and put in all the monsters that everyone was afraid of as a kid? Put in Frankenstein, the werewolf, the vampire, the mummy, the giant creatures that ate up New York in the old B movies. Put 'em all in there."[42] These influences coalesced intoIt, about a shapeshifting monster that takes the form of its victims' fears and haunts the town ofDerry, Maine. He said he thought he was done writing about monsters, and wanted to "bring on all the monsters one last time…and call it It."[43]It won theAugust Derleth Award in 1987.[44]
1987 was an unusually productive year for King. He publishedThe Eyes of the Dragon, ahigh fantasy novel which he originally wrote for his daughter.[45] He publishedMisery, about a popular writer who is injured in a car wreck and held captive by Annie Wilkes, his self-described "number-one fan".Misery shared the inauguralBram Stoker Award withSwan Song byRobert R. McCammon.[46] King says the novel was influenced by his experiences with addiction: "Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan. God, she never wanted to leave."[15] He publishedThe Tommyknockers, a science fiction novel filled, he says, with metaphors for addiction. After the book was published, King's wife staged an intervention, and he agreed to seek treatment for addiction.[47] Two years later, he publishedThe Dark Half, about an author whose literary alter-ego takes on a life of his own.[48] In the author's note, King writes that "I am indebted to the lateRichard Bachman."[49]
1990s:Four Past Midnight toHearts in Atlantis
In 1990, King publishedFour Past Midnight, a collection of four novellas with the common theme of time. In 1991, he publishedNeedful Things, his first novel since achieving sobriety, billed as "The Last Castle Rock Story".[15] In 1992, he publishedGerald's Game andDolores Claiborne, two novels about women loosely linked by a solar eclipse.[50] The latter novel is narrated by the title character in an unbroken monologue;Mark Singer described it as "a morally riveting confession from the earthy mouth of a sixty-six-year-old Maine coastal-island native with a granite-hard life but not a grain of self-pity". King said he based the character of Claiborne on his mother.[23]
In 1994, King's story "The Man in the Black Suit" was published in theHalloween issue ofThe New Yorker.[51] The story went on to win the 1996O. Henry Award. In 1996, King publishedThe Green Mile, the story of a death row inmate, as aserial novel in six parts. It had the distinction of holding the first, fourth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, and fifteenth positions on theNew York Times paperback-best-seller list at the same time.[23] In 1998, he publishedBag of Bones, his first book withScribner, about a recently widowed novelist. Several reviewers said that it showed King's maturation as a writer;Charles de Lint wrote "He hasn't forsaken the spookiness and scares that have made him a brand name, but he uses them more judiciously now... The present-day King has far more insight into the human condition than did his younger self, and better yet, all the skills required to share it with us."[52]Bag of Bones won theBram Stoker andAugust Derleth Awards.[53][54]
In 1999, he publishedThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, about a girl who gets lost in the woods and finds solace in listening to broadcasts ofBoston Red Sox games, andHearts in Atlantis, a book of linked novellas and short stories about coming of age in the 1960s. Later that year, King was hospitalized after being hit by a van. Reflecting on the incident, he said "it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character out of one of my own novels. It's almost funny." He said his nurses were "told in no uncertain terms, don't make anyMisery jokes".[55]
In 2000, King publishedOn Writing, a mix of memoir and style manual whichThe Wall Street Journal called "a one-of-a-kind classic".[56] Later that year he publishedRiding the Bullet, "the world's first mass e-book, with more than 500,000 downloads". Inspired by its success, he began publishing anepistolary horror novel,The Plant, in online installments using thepay what you want method provided byAmazon.com's Honor System.[57] He suggested readers pay $1 per installment, and said he'd only continue publishing if 75% of readers paid.[58] WhenThe Plant folded, the public assumed that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but King later said he had simply run out of stories.[59] The unfinished novel is still available from King's official site, now free.
In 2002, King publishedFrom a Buick 8, a return to the territory ofChristine.[60] In 2005, he published the mysteryThe Colorado Kid for theHard Case Crime imprint.[61] In 2006, he publishedCell, in which a mysterious signal broadcast over cell phones turns users into mindless killers. That same year, he publishedLisey's Story, about the widow of a novelist. He calls it his favorite of his novels, because "I've always felt that marriage creates its own secret world, and only in a long marriage can two people at least approach real knowledge about each other. I wanted to write about that, and felt that I actually got close to what I really wanted to say."[18] In 2007, King served as guest editor for the annual anthologyThe Best American Short Stories.[62]
In 2010, King publishedFull Dark, No Stars, a collection of four novellas with the common theme of retribution. In 2011, he published11/22/63, about a time portal leading to 1958, and an English teacher who travels through it to try to prevent theKennedy assassination.Errol Morris called it "one of the best time travel stories sinceH. G. Wells".[68] In 2013, he publishedJoyland, his second book for Hard Case Crime.[69] Later that year, he publishedDoctor Sleep, a sequel toThe Shining.
During his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk atUniversity of Massachusetts Lowell on December 7, 2012, King said that he was writing a crime novel about a retired policeman being taunted by a murderer, with the working titleMr. Mercedes.[70] In an interview withParade, he confirmed that the novel was "more or less" completed.[71] It was published in 2014 and won theEdgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel.[72] He returned to horror withRevival, which he called "a nasty, dark piece of work".[73] King announced in June 2014 thatMr. Mercedes was part of a trilogy; the sequel,Finders Keepers, was published in 2015.[74] The third book of the trilogy,End of Watch, was released in 2016.[75] In 2018, he releasedThe Outsider, which features the characterHolly Gibney, and the novellaElevation.[76] In 2019, he releasedThe Institute.
2020s:If It Bleeds to present
In 2020, King releasedIf It Bleeds, a collection of four novellas. In 2021, he publishedLater, his third book for Hard Case Crime.[77] In 2022, King released the novelFairy Tale.Holly, about Holly Gibney was released in September 2023.[78] In November 2023, the short story collectionYou Like It Darker, featuring twelve stories (seven previously published and five unreleased) was published byScribner in May 2024.[79] The book debuted at No. 1 onThe New York Times fiction best-seller list for the week ending May 25, 2024.[80] King announced a novel namedNever Flinch, featuring once again the character Holly Gibney, on November 18, 2024. The novel was released on May 27, 2025.[81]
King published five short novels—Rage (1977),The Long Walk (1979),Roadwork (1981),The Running Man (1982) andThinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. He explains: "I did that because back in the early days of my career there was a feeling in the publishing business that one book a year was all the public would accept...eventually the public got wise to this because you can change your name but you can't really disguise your style."[82] Bachman's surname is derived from the bandBachman–Turner Overdrive and his first name is a nod to Richard Stark, the pseudonymDonald E. Westlake used to publish his darker work.[83] The Bachman books are grittier than King's usual fare; King called his alter-ego "Dark-toned, despairing...not a very nice guy." ALiterary Guild member praisedThinner as "what Stephen King would write like if Stephen King could really write."[23]
Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym in 1985 by Steve Brown, a Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk who noticed stylistic similarities between King and Bachman and located publisher's records at theLibrary of Congress that named King as the author ofRage.[84] King announced Bachman's death from "cancer of the pseudonym". King reflected that "Richard Bachman began his career not as a delusion but as a sheltered place where I could publish a few early books which I felt readers might like. Then he began to grow and come alive, as the creatures of a writer's imagination so frequently do... He took on his own reality, that's all, and when his cover was blown, he died."[85] Originally, King plannedMisery to be released under the pseudonym before his identity was discovered.[86]
WhenDesperation (1996) was released, the companion novelThe Regulators was published as a "discovered manuscript" by Bachman. In 2006, King announced that he had discovered another Bachman novel,Blaze, which was published the following year. The original manuscript had been held at theUniversity of Maine for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.[87]
King co-wrote two novels withPeter Straub,The Talisman (1984) andBlack House (2001).[91] Straub recalls that "We tried to make it as difficult as possible for readers to identify who wrote what. Eventually, we were able to successfully imitate each other's style... Steve threw in more commas or clauses, and I kind of made things more simple in sentence structure. And I tried to make things as vivid as I could because Steve is just fabulous at that, and also I tried to write more colloquially." Straub said the only person who could correctly identify who wrote which passages was a fellow author,Neil Gaiman.[92]
In 1986, King made his directorial debut withMaximum Overdrive, an adaptation of his story "Trucks". He recalls: "I was coked out of my mind all through its production, and really didn't know what I was doing."[103] It was neither a critical nor a commercial success; King was nominated for aGolden Raspberry for Worst Director, but lost toPrince, forUnder the Cherry Moon.[104]
When, during the course of an interview forThe New Yorker, I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn't believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed thatI believe it. And I do. Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small, a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, aTyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.[113]
King often starts with a "what-if" scenario, asking what would happen if an alcoholic writer was stranded with his family in a haunted hotel (The Shining), or if one could see the outcome of future events (The Dead Zone), or if one could travel in time to alter the course of history (11/22/63).[114] He writes that "The situation comes first. The characters—always flat and unfeatured, to begin with—come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do thingstheir way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected."[115]
Joyce Carol Oates called King "both a storyteller and an inventor of startling images and metaphors, which linger long in the memory."[9] An example of King's imagery is seen inThe Body when the narrator recalls a childhood clubhouse with a tin roof and rusty screen door: "No matter what time of day you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset... When it rained, being inside the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel drum."[116] King writes that "The use of simile and other figurative language is one of the chief delights of fiction—reading it and writing it, as well. [...] By comparing two seemingly unrelated objects—a restaurant bar and a cave, a mirror and a mirage—we are sometimes able to see an old thing in a new and vivid way. Even if the result is mere clarity instead of beauty, I think writer and reader are participating together in a kind of miracle. Maybe that's drawing it a little strong, but yeah—it's what I believe."[117]
Themes
When asked if fear was his main subject, King said "In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts."[15]
Joyce Carol Oates said that "Stephen King's characteristic subject is small-town American life, often set in fictitious Derry, Maine; tales of family life, marital life, the lives of children banded together by age, circumstance, and urgency, where parents prove oblivious or helpless. The human heart in conflict with itself—in the guise of the malevolent Other. The 'gothic' imagination magnifies the vicissitudes of 'real life' in order to bring it into a sharper and clearer focus."[9] King'sThe Body is aboutcoming of age, a theme he has returned to several times, for example inJoyland.[118]
King often uses authors as characters, such as Ben Mears in'Salem's Lot, Jack Torrance inThe Shining, adultBill Denbrough inIt and Mike Noonan inBag of Bones. He has extended this to breaking thefourth wall by including himself as a character in three novels ofThe Dark Tower. Among other things, this allows King to explore themes of authorship;George Stade writes thatMisery "is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death" whileThe Dark Half "is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakes to raise Cain when he writes."[119]
Introducing King at theNational Book Awards,Walter Mosley said "Stephen King once said that daily life is the frame that makes the picture. His commitment, as I see it, is to celebrate and empower the everyday man and woman as they buy aspirin and cope with cancer. He takes our daily lives and makes them into something heroic. He takes our world, validates our distrust of it and then helps us to see that there's a chance to transcend the muck. He tells us that even if we fail in our struggles, we are still worthy enough to pass on our energies in the survival of humanity."[6] In his acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, King said:
"Frank Norris, the author ofMcTeague, said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth.' And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation... We understand that fiction is a lie to begin with. To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular."[6]
Influences
InOn Writing, King says "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all: read a lot and write a lot."[120] He emphasizes the importance of good description, which "begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary. I began learning my lessons in this regard by readingChandler,Hammett, andRoss Macdonald; I gained perhaps even more respect for the power of compact, descriptive language from readingT. S. Eliot (those ragged claws scuttling across the ocean floor; those coffee spoons), andWilliam Carlos Williams (white chickens, red wheelbarrow, the plums that were in the ice box, so sweet and so cold)."[121]
He provided an appreciation forThe Golden Argosy, a collection of short stories featuring Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and others: "I first foundThe Golden Argosy in a Lisbon Falls (Maine) bargain barn called the Jolly White Elephant, where it was on offer for $2.25. At that time I only had four dollars, and spending over half of it on one book, even a hardcover, was a tough decision. I've never regretted it...The Golden Argosy taught me more about good writing than all the writing classes I've ever taken. It was the best $2.25 I ever spent."[134]
Reception and influence
Critical reception
King has been praised for his use of realistic detail. InA Century of Great Suspense Stories, editorJeffery Deaver wrote that "While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody sinceJohn D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He has often remarked that'Salem's Lot was'Peyton Place meetsDracula'. And so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of story line and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampirism and make them fresh again. Before King, many popular writers found their efforts to make their books serious blue-penciled by their editors. 'Stuff like that gets in the way of the story,' they were told. Well, it's stuff like that that has made King so popular, and helped free the popular name from the shackles of simple genre writing. He is a master of masters."[29]Daniel Mendelsohn, reviewingBag of Bones, wrote that "Stephen King is so widely accepted as America's master of paranormal terrors that you can forget his real genius is for the everyday... This is a book about reanimation: the ghosts', of course, but also Mike's, his desire to re-embrace love and work after a long bereavement that King depicts with an eye for the kind of small but moving details that don't typically distinguish blockbuster horror novels."[135]
Many critics argue that King has matured as a writer. In his analysis of post–World War II horror fiction,The Modern Weird Tale (2001),S. T. Joshi devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone todeus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that sinceGerald's Game (1992), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written.[136]
In 2003, King was honored by theNational Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award:Richard E. Snyder, the former CEO ofSimon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature" and criticHarold Bloom denounced the choice: "The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for 'distinguished contribution' to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process ofdumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer ofpenny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing withEdgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis."[137]
King acknowledged the controversy in his acceptance speech: "There are some people who have spoken out passionately about giving me this medal. There are some people who think it's an extraordinarily bad idea. There have been some people who have spoken out who think it's an extraordinarily good idea. You know who you are and where you stand and most of you who are here tonight are on my side. I'm glad for that. But I want to say it doesn't matter in a sense which side you were on. The people who speak out, speak out because they are passionate about the book, about the word, about the page and, in that sense, we're all brothers and sisters. Give yourself a hand."[6]Shirley Hazzard, whose novelThe Great Fire was that year's National Book Award winner, responded by criticizing King; she later said that she had never read him.[138]
Roger Ebert wrote that "A lot people were outraged when he was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer couldn't be taken seriously. But after finding that his bookOn Writing has more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book sinceStrunk andWhite'sThe Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery. King has, after all, been responsible for the moviesThe Shawshank Redemption,The Green Mile,The Dead Zone,Misery,Apt Pupil,Christine,Hearts in Atlantis,Stand By Me andCarrie... And we must not be ungrateful forSilver Bullet, which I awarded three stars because it was 'either the worst movie made from a Stephen King story, or the funniest', and you know which side of that I'm gonna come down on."[139]
Appraisal by other authors
Cynthia Ozick said that, upon giving a reading with King, "It dawned on me as I listened to him that, never mind all the best sellers and all the stereotypes -- this man is a genuine, true-bornwriter, and that was a revelation. He is notTom Clancy. He writes sentences, and he has a literary focus, and his writing is filled with literary history. It's not glib, it's not just contemporary chatter and it's not stupid -- that's a bad way to say that something's smart, but that's what I mean."[58]
Joyce Carol Oates praised King'ssense of place: "His fiction is famously saturated with the atmosphere of Maine; much of his mostly vividly imagined work—Salem's Lot,Dolores Claiborne, the elegantly composed story 'The Reach', for instance—is a poetic evocation of that landscape, its history and its inhabitants."[9] Oates included the latter story in the second edition ofThe Oxford Book of American Short Stories.[140]
David Foster Wallace assignedCarrie andThe Stand while teaching atIllinois State University. Wallace praised King's ear for dialogue: "He's one of the first people to talk about real Americans and how they live, to capture real American dialogue in all its, like, foulmouthed grandeur... He has a deadly ear for the way people speak... Students come to me and a lot of them have been led to believe that there's good stuff and bad stuff, literary books and popular books, stuff that's redemptive and commercial shit—with a sharp line drawn between the two categories. It's good to show them that there's a certain amount of blurring. Surface-wise, King's work is a bit televisual, but there's really a lot going on."[23]
Influence
In an interview,Sherman Alexie recalls the influence of "Stephen King, who was always writing about underdogs, and bullied kids, and kids fighting back against overwhelming, often supernatural forces... The world aligned against them. As an Indian boy growing up on a reservation, I always identified with his protagonists. Stephen King, fighting the monsters."[143]
Lauren Groff says that "I love Stephen King and I owe him more than I could ever express... I love his wild imagination and his vivid scenes, many of which populate my nightmares even decades after I last read the books they're in. But the greatest thing I gleaned most from reading Stephen King is his big-hearted glee, the way he treats writing with gratitude, the way he sees his job not as the source of anguish and pain many writers self-pityingly see it as, but rather as something he's over-the-moon delighted to be lucky enough to do. If I could steal one thing from King, and keep it close to my heart forever, it is his sense of almost-holy glee when it comes to writing."[144]
The hero ofJunot Díaz'sThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao dreams of being "the Dominican Stephen King", and Díaz alludes to King's work several times throughout the novel.[145]Colson Whitehead recalls that "The first big book I read wasNight Shift by Stephen King, you know, a huge book of short stories. And so for many years I just wanted to write horror fiction."[146] In a talk atVirginia Commonwealth University, Whitehead recalls that in college "I wanted to write the blackShining or the blackSalem's Lot... Take any Stephen King title and put 'the black' in front of it. That's basically what I wanted to do."[147]
King was raisedMethodist,[148][149] but lost his belief in organized religion while in high school. While not conventionally religious, he says he does believe in God.[150]
On April 30, 2012, King published an article inThe Daily Beast calling for rich Americans, including himself, to pay more taxes, citing it as "a practical necessity and moral imperative that those who have received much should be obligated to pay ... in the same proportion".[158] King testified in an August 2022 case brought by the U.S.Justice Department to block a $2.2 billion merger ofPenguin Random House andSimon & Schuster (two of the "Big Five" book publishers).[159]The New York Times credited King's high-profile testimony, which was against his own publisher, with helping to convince presiding judgeFlorence Y. Pan with ultimately blocking the merger.[160]
In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in theMassachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale ofviolent video games to anyone under the age of 18. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor and the easy availability of guns, which he believed were the actual causes of violence.[161] In 2013 King published an essay titledGuns, which discusses thegun debate in the wake of theSandy Hook Elementary School shooting. King called for gun owners to support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons.[162][163]
In June 2018, King called for the release of the Ukrainian filmmakerOleg Sentsov, who was jailed in Russia.[164] In July 2022, Stephen King appeared in a video call with the Russian prankstersVovan and Lexus who played the role ofVolodymyr Zelenskyy. In the call Stephen King said "You can always find things about people to pull them down.Washington andJefferson were slave owners—that doesn't mean they didn't do many good things to the United States of America. There are always people who have flaws, we are humans. On the whole, I thinkBandera is a great man, and you're a great man, and Viva Ukraine!"[165] However, King later realized that he was pranked and apologized on Twitter, noting that he was not the only victim and "other victims who fell for these guys includeJ. K. Rowling,Prince Harry, andJustin Trudeau".[166]
Two days after theassassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, King posted on X, "He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin'." The comment sparked backlash, leading King to issue an apology in a later tweet.[167]
Maine politics
King endorsedShenna Bellows in the2014 U.S. Senate election for the seat held byRepublicanSusan Collins.[168] King publicly criticizedPaul LePage during LePage's tenure asGovernor of Maine, referring to him as one ofThe Three Stooges (with then-Florida GovernorRick Scott and then-Wisconsin GovernorScott Walker being the other two).[169] He was critical of LePage for incorrectly suggesting in a 2015 radio address that King avoided paying Maine income taxes by living out of state for part of the year. The statement was later corrected by the governor's office, but no apology was issued. King said LePage was "full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green"[170] and demanded that LePage "man up and apologize".[171] LePage declined to apologize to King, stating, "I never said Stephen King did not pay income taxes. What I said was, Stephen King's not in Maine right now. That's what I said."[172]
The attention garnered by the LePage criticism led to efforts to encourage King to run for Governor of Maine in2018.[173] King said he would not run or serve.[174] King sent a tweet on June 30, 2015, calling LePage "a terrible embarrassment to the state I live in and love. If he won't govern, he should resign." He later clarified that he was not calling on LePage to resign, but to "go to work or go back home".[175] On August 27, 2016, King called LePage "a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist".[176]
Philanthropy
King subsidizes theNational Poetry Foundation, which was directed by his professor and mentorBurton Hatlen, and has endowed scholarships named for another professor, Edward Holmes. Mark Singer also notes Bangor's "most monumental testament to King's philanthropy", the "Shawn T. Mansfield Baseball Complex, dedicated six years ago in memory of the son of a Little League coach and friend of King's who died at fourteen of cerebral palsy."[23] King has stated that he donates approximately $4 million per year "to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts".[158][177] The Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, chaired by King and his wife, ranks sixth among Maine charities in terms of average annual giving, with over $2.8 million in grants per year, according toThe Grantsmanship Center.[178]
In 2002, King,Peter Straub,John Grisham andPat Conroy organized the Wavedancer Benefit, a public reading to raise funds for the actor and audiobook readerFrank Muller, who had been injured in a motorcycle accident.[179] Their reading was released as an audiobook.[180] In November 2011, the STK Foundation donated $70,000 in matched funding via his radio station to help pay the heating bills for families in need in his hometown of Bangor, Maine, during the winter.[181] In February 2021, King's Foundation donated $6,500 to help children from the Farwell Elementary School inLewiston, Maine, to publish two novels on which they had been working over the course of several prior years, before being stopped due to theCOVID-19 pandemic in Maine.[182]
After meeting her while studying at theUniversity of Maine,[183] King marriedTabitha Spruce on January 2, 1971.[184] She is also a novelist and philanthropist. She has been supportive of him throughout his career, even rescuing his early manuscript ofCarrie from the trash when he doubted himself.[183] They own and divide their time between three houses: one inBangor, Maine, one inLovell, Maine, and for the winter a waterfront mansion located off theGulf of Mexico inSarasota, Florida. King's home in Bangor has been described as an unofficial tourist attraction, and as of 2019[update], the couple plan to convert it into a facility housing his archives and a writers' retreat.[185]
The Kings have three children—two sons and a daughter, Naomi (born June 1, 1970), who is aUnitarian Universalist Church minister inPlantation, Florida, with her partner,Thandeka.[186] Both of King's sons are also professional authors:Owen King (born February 21, 1977)[183] published his first collection of stories,We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005.Joseph Hillström King (born June 4, 1972),[183] who writes as Joe Hill, published his first collection of short stories,20th Century Ghosts, in 2005.[187]
King wearing aBoston Red Sox jersey at a book signing in November 2004
King and his wife own the Zone Corporation, a radio station group established in 1983 to acquire WACZ in Bangor, which was renamedWZON.[194][195] Two additional stations,WKIT-FM andWNSW inBrewer, were added in 1995;[196] WNSW was quickly closed down.[197] A third station, WDME-FM inDover-Foxcroft (later renamedWZLO), was acquired in 2001.[198] In December 2024, King announced that the stations would shut down at the end of the year. He cited his advancing age and financial losses from the stations as reasons for the closure.[199] Ahead of the planned closure, King reached a deal to sell WKIT to two Bangor businessmen; WZON and WZLO remain slated for closure.[200]
When asked about his reading habits, King replied, "I'm sort of an omnivore, apt to go from the latestJohn Sandford toD. H. Lawrence toCormac McCarthy." When asked what books we'd be surprised to find on his shelves, he answered "Poetry, maybe? I loveAnne Sexton,Richard Wilbur,W. B. Yeats. The poetry I come back to again and again are the narrative poems ofStephen Dobyns." When asked which novel he comes back to, he namedThomas Williams'sThe Hair of Harold Roux. When asked who his favorite novelist is, he said "ProbablyDon Robertson, author ofParadise Falls,The Ideal, Genuine Man and the marvelously titledMiss Margaret Ridpath and the Dismantling of the Universe. What I appreciate most in novels and novelists is generosity, a complete baring of the heart and mind, and Robertson always did that. He also wrote the best single line I've ever read in a novel: Of a funeral he wrote, 'There were that day, o Lord, squadrons of birds.'"[18]
Car accident and aftermath
On June 19, 1999, at about 4:30 pm, King was walking on the shoulder ofMaine State Route 5, inLovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Edwin Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet (four meters) from the pavement of Route 5.[202]: 206 Early reports at the time from Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker claimed King was hit from behind, and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.[203]
Smith was later arrested and charged withdriving to endanger and aggravated assault. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of driving to endanger and was sentenced to six months in county jail (suspended) and had his driving license suspended for a year.[204] In his bookOn Writing, King states he was heading north, walking against the traffic. Shortly before the crash took place, a woman in a car, also northbound, passed King first followed by a light blue Dodge van. The van was looping from one side of the road to the other, and the woman told her passenger she hoped "that guy in the van doesn't hit him".[202]: 206
King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. He was transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by air ambulance toCentral Maine Medical Center (CMMC) inLewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered that doctors initially considered amputating his leg but stabilized the bones in the leg with anexternal fixator.[205] After five operations in 10 days and physical therapy, King resumed work onOn Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could sit for only about 40 minutes before the pain became unbearable.[202]: 216
King's wife got in touch with his lawyer to purchase Smith's van, reportedly to prevent it from appearing oneBay. He recalls: "When I was in the hospital, mostly unconscious, my wife got a lawyer who's just a friend of the family... And she got in touch with him and said, buy it so that somebody else doesn't buy it and decide to break it up and sell it on eBay, on the Internet. And so he did. And for about six months, I did have these, sort of, fantasies of smashing the van up. But my wife—I don't always listen to her the first time, but sooner or later, she usually gets through. And what she says makes more sense than what I had planned. And her thought was that the best thing to do would be to very quietly remove it from this plane of existence, which is what we did."[55]
Other media appearances
InThe Princess Bride,William Goldman writes that Stephen King is "doing the abridgment" of the fictional bookButtercup's Baby.[206] King explains this is an inside joke from Goldman, "who's an old friend. He's done the screen adaptations for a number of my novels. He didMisery,Dreamcatcher and he also didHearts in Atlantis, and although he's not credited, he worked onDolores Claiborne as well, so Bill and I go back a long way. I admired his books before I ever met him and as a kind of return tip of the cap, he put me in that bookThe Princess Bride."[149]
Carrie was included on theNew York Public Library's list of Books of the Century under the category "Pop Culture Mass & Entertainment".[235] In 2008,On Writing was ranked 21st onEntertainment Weekly's list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".[236] It also madeTime's list of the 100 greatest nonfiction books published since the magazine's founding in 1923. Gilbert Cruz wrote, "it's the most practical and unpretentious writer's manual around—as practical and unpretentious as its author, who, yes, just happens to be one of the world's most famous novelists."[237]
11/22/63 (2011) was named one of the five best fiction books of the year inThe New York Times: "Throughout his career, King has explored fresh ways to blend the ordinary and the supernatural. His new novel imagines a time portal in a Maine diner that lets an English teacher go back to 1958 in an effort to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and—rewardingly for readers—also allows King to reflect on questions of memory, fate and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America. The past guards its secrets, this novel reminds us, and the horror behind the quotidian is time itself."[238]
^Gross, Terry."Stephen King: 'My Imagination Was Very Active — Even At A Young Age".National Public Radio.I've been queried a lot about where I get my ideas or how I got interested in this stuff. And at some point, a lot of interviewers just turn into Dr. Freud and put me on the couch and say, what was your childhood like? And I say various things, and I confabulate a little bit and kind of dance around the question as best as I can, but bottom line - my childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did.
^Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (August 11, 1982)."Books of the Times".The New York Times.Archived from the original on June 21, 2018. RetrievedFebruary 15, 2019.
^Beahm, George (2015).The Stephen King companion: forty years of fear from the master of horror. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 118–119.ISBN9781466856684.
^Manning, Matthew K. (2010). "1980s". In Dolan, Hannah (ed.).DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle.Dorling Kindersley. p. 221.ISBN978-0-7566-6742-9.Batman celebrated the 400th issue of his self-titled comic with a blockbuster featuring dozens of famous comic book creators and... with an introduction by novelist Stephen King.
^Cowsill, Alan "2000s" in Dolan, p. 340: "The first five double-sized issues consisted of two stories, illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque. Scott Snyder wrote each issue's lead feature, and Stephen King wrote the back-up tales."
^Jenna Blum, 2013,The Modern Scholar published by Recorded Books,The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction, Disk 1, Track 11,ISBN978-1-4703-8437-1
^King, Stephen (2000).On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. pp. 164–165.
^Spignesi, Stephen J. (August 4, 2010).The Essential Stephen King: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels, Short Stories. Movies, and Other Creations of the World's Most Popular Writer. New Page Books. p. 312. Archived atGoogle Books. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
^Rogovoy, Seth (September 21, 2019)."The Secret Jewish History Of Stephen King".The Forward.Archived from the original on December 21, 2020. RetrievedSeptember 2, 2020.King, who turned 72 today, was raised Methodist and still identifies as such.
Collings, Michael R. (1986).The Films of Stephen King. Starmont House.ISBN0-930261-10-0.
Collings, Michael R. (1986).The Annotated Guide to Stephen King: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography of the Works of America's Premier Horror Writer. Starmont House.ISBN0-930261-80-1.
Collings, Michael R. (1987).The Stephen King Phenomenon. Starmont House.ISBN0-930261-12-7.
Collings, Michael R. (2003).Horror Plum'd: An International Stephen King Bibliography and Guide 1960–2000. Overlook Connection Press.ISBN1-892950-45-6.
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