Stephen King

For other people with either the same or similar names, see Stephen King (disambiguation).

Stephen King
King in 2007
Born	Stephen Edwin King (1947-09-21) September 21, 1947 Portland, Maine, U.S.
Pen name	Richard Bachman John Swithen Beryl Evans
Occupation	Author
Alma mater	University of Maine (BA)
Period	1967–present
Genre	Horror fantasy supernatural fiction drama gothic genre fiction dark fantasy post-apocalyptic fiction crime fiction suspense thriller
Spouse	Tabitha Spruce ​ (m. 1971)​
Children	3, including Joe and Owen
Signature
Website
stephenking.com

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", his books have sold more than 350 million copies as of 2006, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published over 65 novels/novellas, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.

Early life

King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a traveling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II, was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing 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 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. King is of Scots-Irish descent.

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; and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was 11, his family moved to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist, but lost his belief in organized religion while in high school. While no longer religious, he says he chooses to believe in the existence of God.

As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing (2000).^{[dubious – discuss]}

King told Terry Gross, "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." He 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." He cites Tales From the Crypt and other horror comics as an early influence.

King was a voracious reader in his youth: "I read everything from Nancy Drew to Psycho. My favorite was The Shrinking Man, by Richard Matheson — I was 8 when I found that." He compared his uncle's dowsing for water to the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. That inspiration occurred while browsing through an attic with his elder brother, where he discovered a box of his father's books: "The box I found that day was a treasure trove of old Avon paperbacks... The pick of the litter, however, was an H. P. Lovecraft collection from 1947 called The Lurking Fear and Other Stories... I was on my way. Lovecraft—courtesy of my father—opened the way for me."

King recalls asking a bookmobile driver, "Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She gave him Lord of the Flies. It 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 are for, why they are indispensable." King named his town of Castle Rock after the mountain fort in Lord of the Flies, and used a quotation from it as an epigraph to Hearts in Atlantis. King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon High School (Maine) in Lisbon Falls, Maine, in 1966. He contributed to Dave's Rag, the newspaper his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends based on movies he had seen. (He was forced to return the profits when it was discovered by his teachers.) The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which was serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of the fanzine Comics Review, in 1965. It was republished the following year in revised form, as "In a Half-World of Terror", in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman. As a teen, King won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award. In high school, King worked as a sports reporter for Lisbon's Weekly Enterprise. His editor, John Gould, gave him some advice that stayed with him: "write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."

King entered the University of Maine at Orono in 1966 on a scholarship. While there, he "received solid encouragement from two professors, Edward Holmes and Burton Hatlen." King participated in a writing workshop organized by Hatlen, where he fell in love with Tabitha Spruce. King graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and his daughter Naomi Rachel was born that year. Stephen and Tabitha wed in 1971.

Career

Beginnings

In 1971, King worked as a teacher at Hampden Academy.

King sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967.

After graduating from the University of Maine, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, unable to find a teaching post immediately, he supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories were republished in Night Shift. The short story "The Raft" was published in Adam, a men's magazine. After being arrested for stealing traffic cones (he was annoyed after one of the cones knocked his muffler loose), he was fined $250 for petty larceny but had no money to pay. However, a check then arrived for "The Raft" (then titled "The Float"), and King cashed it to pay the fine. In 1971, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. During 1966–1970, he wrote a draft of his dystopian novel The Long Walk and the anti-war novel Sword in the Darkness, but neither of the works was published at the time; only The Long Walk was released, in 1979.

1970s: Carrie to The Dead Zone

Portrait from the first edition of Carrie (1974)

Portrait from the first edition of The Shining (1977)

Portrait from the first edition of The Dead Zone (1979)

In 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by Doubleday. It was King's fourth novel, but the first to be published. He recalls its origin: "Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together." He wrote it on his wife Tabitha's portable typewriter. It began as a short story intended for Cavalier magazine, but King tossed the first three pages in the trash. Tabitha recovered them and encouraged him to finish the story, saying she would help him with the female perspective; he followed her advice and expanded it into a novel. She told him: "You've got something here. I really think you do." He said: "I persisted because I was dry and had no better ideas… My considered opinion was that I had written the world's all-time loser." Per The 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."

When Carrie was chosen for publication, King's phone was out of service. Doubleday editor William Thompson, who became King's close friend, sent a telegram to King's house in late March or early April 1973 which read: "Carrie Officially A Doubleday Book. $2,500 Advance Against Royalties. Congrats, Kid – The Future Lies Ahead, Bill." King said he bought a new Ford Pinto with the advance. On May 13, 1973, New American Library bought the paperback rights for $400,000, which—in accordance with King's contract with Doubleday—was split between them.

King was teaching Dracula to high school students and wondered what would happen if Old World vampires came to a small New England town. This was the germ of Salem's Lot, which King described as "Peyton Place meets Dracula." In a 1987 interview, he said it was his favorite of his books, "mostly because of what it says about small towns. They are kind of a dying organism right now. The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" (King now calls Lisey's Story his favorite of his novels.)

After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado. He paid a visit to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park which provided the basis for The Shining, about an alcoholic writer and his family taking care of a hotel for the winter. King's family returned to Auburn, Maine in 1975, where he completed The 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 (there's something a little depressing about such a united opinion that you did your best work twenty years ago, but we won't go into that just now, thanks.)" In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Philip, his third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. In 1979, he published The Dead Zone, about an ordinary man gifted with second sight. It was the first of his novels to take place in Castle Rock, Maine.

1980s: Danse Macabre to The Dark Half

Portrait from the first edition of Firestarter (1980)

Portrait from the first edition of Skeleton Crew (1985)

Portrait from the first edition of It (1986)

Portrait from the first edition of Misery (1987)

Portrait from the first edition of The Tommyknockers (1987)

In 1981, King published Danse Macabre, an overview of the horror genre based on courses he taught at the University of Maine. In 1982, King published Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas with a more serious dramatic bent than the horror fiction for which he had become famous. Three of its four novellas were adapted as films: The Body as Stand by Me (1986); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption as The Shawshank Redemption (1994); and Apt Pupil as the film of the same name (1998). The novella The Breathing Method won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. King recalls "I sent them Different Seasons and [King's editor] said, well, first of all you call it seasons, and you have just written three. I wrote another one, The Breathing Method, and that was the book. I got the best reviews in my life. And that was the first time that people thought, woah, this isn't really a horror thing."

King struggled with addiction throughout the decade, and says he "barely remembers writing" Cujo (1982)." In 1983, he published Christine, "A love triangle involving 17-year-old misfit Arnie Cunningham, his new girlfriend and a haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury." Later that year, he published Pet 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 bring the dead back to life, albeit imperfectly. He initially found it too disturbing to publish, and resurrected it to fulfill his contract with Doubleday.

In 1985, King published Skeleton Crew, a book of short fiction including "The Reach" and The Mist. King recalls that "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." These influences would coalesce into It, about a shapeshifting monster that takes the form of its victim's fears and haunts the town of Derry, 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." It won the August Derleth Award in 1987.

In 1987, he published the fantasy The Eyes of the Dragon, which he originally wrote for his daughter. That same year, he published Misery, about Paul Sheldon, a popular writer who is injured in a car wreck and held captive by Annie Wilkes, his self-described "number-one fan." King recalls that "Paul Sheldon turned out to be a good deal more resourceful than I initially thought, and his efforts to play Scheherazade and save his life gave me a chance to say some things about the redemptive power of writing I had long felt but never articulated." It shared the inaugural Bram Stoker Award with Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon. King says Misery 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." Later in 1987 he published The Tommyknockers, "a forties-style science fiction tale" he says was influenced by his drug use. After the book was published, King's wife staged an intervention, which he recalls as "a kind of This is Your Life in Hell", and he agreed to seek treatment for addiction. Two years later, he published The Dark Half, about an author whose literary alter-ego takes on a life of his own. In the author's note, King writes that "I am indebted to the late Richard Bachman."

Pseudonyms

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, King published five short novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. King 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." Bachman's surname is derived from the Canadian hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and his first name is a nod to Richard Stark, the pseudonym of Donald E. Westlake. The Bachman books are grittier than King's usual fare; King called Bachman "Dark-toned, despairing...not a very nice guy." A Literary Guild member praised Thinner as "what Stephen King would write like if Stephen King could really write."

Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed stylistic similarities between King and Bachman and located publisher's records at the Library of Congress that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. King writes 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. I made light of this in the few interviews I felt required to give on the subject, saying that Richard Bachman had died of cancer of the pseudonym, but it was actually shock that killed him." In 1996, when Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators carried the "Bachman" byline.

In 2006, King announced that he had "discovered" another Bachman novel, Blaze. It was published in 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's alma mater, the University of Maine, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.

King has used other pseudonyms. The short story "The Fifth Quarter" was published under the pseudonym John Swithen (the name of a character in Carrie), by Cavalier in April 1972. The story was reprinted in King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993 under his own name. In the introduction to Blaze, King claims that Bachman was the person using the Swithen pseudonym. The "children's book" 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. It is adapted from a fictional book central to the plot of King's The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.

The Dark Tower

Main article: The Dark Tower (series)

In the late 1970s, King began what became a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate-reality universe that is a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and the American Wild West as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti Westerns. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was initially published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman, from 1977 to 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as an eight-book epic series called The Dark Tower, whose books King wrote and published infrequently over four decades (1978-2012).

1990s: Needful Things to Hearts in Atlantis

In 1991, King published Needful Things, his first novel since achieving sobriety, billed as "The Last Castle Rock Story". In 1992, he published Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne, two novels about women loosely linked by a solar eclipse. 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. In 1994, King published the short story "The Man in the Black Suit" in The New Yorker. The story won the O. Henry Award in 1996.

In 1996, King published The Green Mile, the story of a death row inmate, as a serial novel. In 1998, King published of Bag of Bones, about a recently widowed novelist, billed as "A Haunted Love Story". The book was well-received, with The Denver Post calling it "the finest he's written." Charles de Lint wrote that it showed King's maturation as a writer: "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." Bag of Bones won the August Derleth Award and the Bram Stoker Award. In 1999, he published Hearts in Atlantis, a book of linked novellas and short stories about coming of age in the 1960s. The stories are loosely autobiographical; in an author's note, King writes that while the places in the book are fictionalized, "Although it is difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened."

In 1999, King was hospitalized after being hit by a van. Reflecting on the incident, King wrote "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 any Misery jokes."

2000s: On Writing to Under the Dome

Stephen King at the Harvard Book Store, June 6, 2005

In 2000, King published On Writing, a mix of memoir and style manual which The Wall Street Journal called "a one-of-a-kind classic." Later that year he published Riding the Bullet, "the world's first mass e-book, with more than 500,000 downloads." Inspired by its success, he began publishing an epistolary horror novel, The Plant, in online installments. He suggested readers pay $1 per installment, on the honors system, and would only continue publishing if 75% of readers paid. At first the public assumed that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but King later stated that he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished novel is still available from King's official site, now free.He predicted that e-books would become 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012". He added that: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."

King wrote the first draft of Dreamcatcher (2001) with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, which he called "the world's finest word processor". In 2002, he published From a Buick 8, a return to the territory of Christine. In 2005, King published the mystery The Colorado Kid for the Hard Case Crime imprint.

In 2006, King published Cell, an apocalyptic novel in which a mysterious signal broadcast over cell phones turns users into mindless killers. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones. That same year, he published Lisey's Story, about the widow of a popular 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." King dedicated the novel to his wife.

In 2007, King served as guest editor for the annual anthology The Best American Short Stories.

In 2008, King published Duma Key, his first novel set in Florida, which won the Bram Stoker Award. He also published the collection Just After Sunset, featuring 13 short pieces, including the novella N. Starting July 28, 2008, N. was released as a serialized animated series to lead up to the release of Just After Sunset. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria.

King's novel Under the Dome was published later that year, and debuted at No. 1 in The New York Times Bestseller List. Janet Maslin said of it, "Hard as this thing is to hoist, it's even harder to put down."

2010s–present

In 2010, King published Full Dark, No Stars, a collection of four novellas. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy.

In 2011, King published 11/22/63, about a time portal leading to 1958, and an English teacher who travels through it to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. The filmmaker Errol Morris called it "one of the best time travel stories since H. G. Wells." It was nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel. In 2013, King published Joyland, his second book for the Hard Case Crime imprint.

During his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk at University 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 title Mr. Mercedes. In an interview with Parade, King confirmed that the novel was "more or less" completed; he published it in June 2014. He returned to horror with Revival, which he called "a nasty, dark piece of work." King announced in June 2014 that Mr. Mercedes is part of a trilogy; the second book, Finders Keepers, was published in 2015. The third book of the trilogy, End of Watch, was released in 2016.

In 2018, he released The Outsider, which featured the character Holly Gibney, and the novella Elevation. In 2019, he released The Institute. In 2020, King released If It Bleeds, a collection of four novellas. In 2021, he published Later, his third book for Hard Case Crime. In 2022, King released the novel Fairy Tale. Holly, about Holly Gibney was released in September 2023.

Collaborations

Writings

King co-wrote two novels with Peter Straub, The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001).

King produced an artist's book with designer Barbara Kruger, My Pretty Pony (1989), published in a limited edition of 250 by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Alfred A. Knopf released it in a general trade edition. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2001) was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red (2002). Published anonymously, the book was written by Ridley Pearson in the form of a diary by Ellen Rimbauer, and annotated by the fictional professor of paranormal activity Joyce Reardon. The novel tie-in idea was repeated on Stephen King's next project, the miniseries Kingdom Hospital. Richard Dooling, King's collaborator on the series, published The Journals of Eleanor Druse in 2004. Eleanor Druse is a key character in Kingdom Hospital, much as Dr. Joyce Readon and Ellen Rimbauer are key characters in Rose Red.

King co-wrote a novella with his son Joe Hill, Throttle, which appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson. Their second novella collaboration, In the Tall Grass (2012), was published in two parts in Esquire. King and his son Owen co-wrote Sleeping Beauties, set in a West Virginia women's prison. King and Richard Chizmar co-wrote Gwendy's Button Box (2017). A sequel, Gwendy's Magic Feather (2019), was a solo effort by Chizmar. In 2022, King and Chizmar rejoined forces for Gwendy's Final Task.

In The Princess Bride, William Goldman writes that Stephen King is "doing the abridgment" of the fictional book Buttercup's Baby. 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 did Misery, Dreamcatcher and he also did Hearts in Atlantis, and although he's not credited, he worked on Dolores 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 book The Princess Bride."

Music

In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult recorded an updated version of its 1974 song "Astronomy". The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King. King collaborated with Michael Jackson on Ghosts (1996), a 40-minute music video. King said he was interested in collaborating as he is "always interested in trying something new, and for me, writing a minimusical would be new". In 2012, King provided the narration for Shooter Jennings's album Black Ribbons. King played guitar for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a charity supergroup whose members included Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Greg Iles and other authors. King and his band-mates co-authored the e-book Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (2013). King co-wrote the musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012) with T. Bone Burnett and John Mellencamp.

Comics

In 1985, King wrote his first work for the comic book medium, writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with comics, such as Harlan Ellison. He wrote the introduction to Batman No. 400, an anniversary issue where he expressed his preference for the character over Superman. In 2010, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series co-written by King and short-story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque. King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five-issues story arc.

Style, themes and influences

Style

Stephen King in 2011

In his memoir On Writing, King recalls:

"When, during the course of an interview for The 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 that I 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, a Tyrannosaurus 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."

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). 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 things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected."

Joyce Carol Oates called King "both a storyteller and an inventor of startling images and metaphors, which linger long in the memory." An example of King's imagery is seen in The 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." 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. When it's on target, a simile delights us in much the same way meeting an old friend in a crowd of strangers does. 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."

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."

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." King's The Body is about coming of age, a theme he'd return to several times, for example in Joyland.

King often uses authors as characters, such as Ben Mears in 'Salem's Lot, Jack Torrance in The Shining, adult Bill Denbrough in It, and Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones. He has extended this to breaking the fourth wall by including himself as a character in the three novels of The Dark Tower series released in 2003 and 2004. George Stade writes that Misery "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" while The 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."

Influences

In On Writing, King 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 reading Chandler, Hammett, and Ross Macdonald; I gained perhaps even more respect for the power of compact, descriptive language from reading T. S. Eliot (those ragged claws scuttling across the ocean floor; those coffee spoons), and William Carlos Williams (white chickens, red wheelbarrow, the plums that were in the ice box, so sweet and so cold)."

King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most". Other influences include Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, Joseph Payne Brennan, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, Don Robertson and Thomas Williams. King often pays homage to classic horror stories by retelling them in a modern context. He recalls that while writing 'Salem's Lot, "I decided I wanted to try to use the book partially as a form of literary homage (as Peter Straub had done in Ghost Story, working in the tradition of such 'classical' ghost story writers as Henry James, M. R. James, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.) So my novel bears an intentional similarity to Bram Stoker's Dracula, and after a while it began to seem I was playing an interesting—to me, at least—game of literary racquet-ball: 'Salem's Lot itself was the ball and Dracula was the wall I kept hitting it against, watching to see how and where it could bounce, so I could hit it again. As a matter of fact, it took some pretty interesting bounces, and I ascribe this mostly to the fact that, while my ball existed in the twentieth century, the wall was very much a product of the nineteenth." Similarly, King's Revival is a modern riff on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. King dedicated the novel to "the people who built my house": Shelley, Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Straub and Arthur Machen, "whose short novel The Great God Pan has haunted me all my life." Bag of Bones alludes to a twentieth century Gothic novel, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

In J. Peder Zane's The Top Ten: Authors Pick Their Favorite Books, King chose The Golden Argosy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Satanic Verses, McTeague, Lord of the Flies, Bleak House, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Raj Quartet, Light in August and Blood Meridian. He provided an appreciation for The Golden Argosy, a collection of short stories featuring Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and others. He recalls that "I first found The 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." He calls it "an amazing resource for readers and writers, a treasury in every sense of the word... 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." In 2022, he provided another list of ten favorite books; Lord of the Flies, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Blood Meridian remained, and he added Ship of Fools, The Orphan Master's Son, Invisible Man, Watership Down, The Hair of Harold Roux, American Pastoral and The Lord of the Rings. He added, "Although Anthony Powell's novels should probably be on here, especially the sublimely titled Casanova's Chinese Restaurant and Books Do Furnish a Room. And Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. And at least six novels by Patricia Highsmith. And what about Patrick O'Brian? See how hard this is to do?"

Reception and influence

Critical reception

In his book The Philosophy of Horror (1990), Noël Carroll discusses King's work as an exemplar of modern horror fiction. Analyzing both the narrative structure of King's fiction and King's non-fiction ruminations on the art and craft of writing, Carroll writes that for King, "the horror story is always a contest between the normal and the abnormal such that the normal is reinstated and, therefore, affirmed."

In his analysis of post–World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic 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 to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1992), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written.

In his short story collection A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffery Deaver noted that King "singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He has often remarked that 'Salem's Lot was "Peyton Place meets Dracula. 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."

In 2003, King was honored by the National 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 of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature" and critic Harold 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 of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.

Orson Scott Card responded:

Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite.

In his review of Secret Window, 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 book On Writing has more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery.

King has, after all, been responsible for the movies The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Dead Zone, Misery, Apt Pupil, Christine, Hearts in Atlantis, Stand By Me and Carrie... And we must not be ungrateful for Silver 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."

Reviewing Bag of Bones, Daniel Mendelsohn 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."

Appraisal by other authors

Joyce Carol Oates called King "a brilliantly rooted, psychologically 'realistic' writer, for whom the American scene has been a continuous source of inspiration, and American popular culture a vast cornucopia of possibilities." Oates praises "the elegiac, poetic realism" of King's "The Reach", which she included in the second edition of The Oxford Book of American Short Stories.

Peter Straub favorably compared King to Charles Dickens: "Both are novelists of vast popularity and enormous bibliographies, both are beloved writers with a pronounced taste for the morbid and grotesque, both display a deep interest in the underclass.” Straub included King's short story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French" in the Library of America anthology American Fantastic Tales.

David Foster Wallace assigned Carrie and The Stand while teaching at Illinois State University. Wallace said of King: "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."

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."

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."

The hero of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao dreams of being "the Dominican Stephen King", and Diaz alludes to King's work several times throughout the novel. Colson Whitehead recalls that "The first big book I read was Night Shift by Stephen King, you know, a huge book of short stories. And so for many years I just wanted to write horror fiction." In a talk at Virginia Commonwealth University, Whitehead recalls that in college "I wanted to write the black Shining or the black Salem's Lot... Take any Stephen King title and put 'the black' in front of it. That's basically what I wanted to do."

Political views and activism

King campaigning for Gary Hart for President in 1984

In 1984, King endorsed Gary Hart's presidential campaign.

King at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, 2013

In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale of violent 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.

During the 2008 presidential election, King endorsed Barack Obama.

On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement.

On April 30, 2012, King published an article in The 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".

On January 25, 2013, King published an essay titled Guns via Amazon.com's Kindle single feature, which discusses the gun debate in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. King called for gun owners to support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons, writing, "Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction...When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use." The essay became the fifth-bestselling non-fiction title for the Kindle.

In 2016, King was one of many writers who signed a letter condemning the candidacy of Donald Trump. It began: "Because, as writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power" and concluded "Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response; For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States."

King criticized former Iowa Rep. Steve King, deeming him a racist and saying he was tired of being confused with him.

In June 2018, King called for the release of the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was jailed in Russia.

In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, King endorsed Elizabeth Warren's campaign. Warren eventually suspended her campaign, and King later endorsed Joe Biden's campaign in the 2020 general election.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, King expressed support for Ukraine. On his Twitter account, King posted a photo in an "I stand with Ukraine" t-shirt and later tweeted that he refuses to cooperate with Russian publishers.

In July 2022, Stephen King appeared in a video call with the Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus who played the role of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In the call Stephen King said "You can always find things about people to pull them down. Washington and Jefferson 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 think Bandera is a great man, and you're a great man, and Viva Ukraine!" However, King later realized that he was pranked and apologized on Twitter, noting that he wasn't the only victim and "other victims who fell for these guys include J.K. Rowling, Prince Harry, and Justin Trudeau".

King testified in an August 2022 in a case brought by the U.S. Justice Department to block a $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster (two of the "Big Five" book publishers). The New York Times credited King's high-profile testimony, which was against his own publisher, with helping to convince presiding judge Florence Y. Pan with ultimately blocking the merger.

Maine politics

King endorsed Shenna Bellows in the 2014 U.S. Senate election for the seat held by Republican Susan Collins.

King publicly criticized Paul LePage during LePage's tenure as Governor of Maine, referring to him as one of The Three Stooges (with then-Florida Governor Rick Scott and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker being the other two). 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" and demanded that LePage "man up and apologize". 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."

The attention garnered by the LePage criticism led to efforts to encourage King to run for Governor of Maine in 2018. King said he would not run or serve. 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". On August 27, 2016, King called LePage "a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist".

Philanthropy

Mark Singer writes that King "subsidizes the National Poetry Foundation", directed by his professor and mentor Burton Hatlen, and has endowed scholarships named for another professor, Edward Holmes.

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 organisations that underwrite the arts."

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 to The Grantsmanship Center.

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.

In February 2021, King's Foundation donated $6,500 to help children from the Farwell Elementary School in Lewiston, Maine, to publish two novels on which they had been working over the course of several prior years, before being stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Maine.

Personal life

King's home in Bangor

King married Tabitha Spruce on January 2, 1971. She too is a novelist and philanthropist. They own and divide their time between three houses: one in Bangor, Maine, one in Lovell, Maine, and for the winter a waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. King's home in Bangor has been described as an unofficial tourist attraction, and as of 2019, the couple plan to convert it into a facility housing his archives and a writers' retreat.

Portrait of Owen and Stephen from the first edition of Different Seasons (1982)

The Kings have three children—a daughter and two sons. Their daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida, with her partner, Thandeka. Both of the Kings' sons are authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillström King, who writes as Joe Hill, published his first collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005.

King wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey at a book signing in November 2004

King has a history of abusing alcohol and other drugs. He wrote of his struggles with addiction in On Writing. Soon after Carrie's release in 1974, King's mother died of uterine cancer; King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk while delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral. Shortly after Cujo's publication, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping in front of him evidence of his addictions taken from his office, including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, Robitussin, and mouthwash. As King related in On Writing, he then sought help, and became sober in the late 1980s.

King told Bon Appétit magazine in 2013 that he married Tabitha "because of the fish that she cooked for me." He said his favorite foods are baked salmon and cheesecake. A recipe from King, Lunchtime Gloop, is included in the 2020 cookbook Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook. The Rachael Ray magazine printed the recipe as made with "greasy hamburger" and canned spaghetti.

King and his wife Tabitha own Zone Radio Corp, a radio station group consisting of WZON/620 AM, WKIT/100.3 & WZLO/103.1.

In 1990, King published an essay about his son Owen's Little League team in The New Yorker. King is a longtime fan of the Boston Red Sox. In 2004, King published Faithful, co-written with his friend and fellow author (and Red Sox fan) Stewart O'Nan. It records their correspondence about the historic 2004 Boston Red Sox season that culminated with the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series, ending an 86-year championship drought.

Car accident and aftermath

On June 19, 1999, at about 4:30 p.m., King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5, in Lovell, 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. 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. However, Smith was later arrested and charged with driving 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. In his book On Writing, King states he was heading north, walking against the traffic. Shortly before the accident 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."

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 to Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston. 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 an external fixator. After five operations in 10 days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could sit for only about 40 minutes before the pain became unbearable.

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, to King's disappointment, as he had fantasized about smashing it.

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Stephen King

• American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
  • 1978: 'Salem's Lot
  • 1979: The Long Walk
  • 1981: Firestarter
• American Library Association Alex Awards 2009: Just After Sunset
• Audie Award
  • Best Unabridged Fiction Audiobook
    • 2002: The Talisman
  • Best Fiction Audiobook
    • 2009: Duma Key
    • 2014: Doctor Sleep
  • Best Thriller / Suspense Audiobook
    • 2020:
• Balrog Award Best Collection / Anthology 1980: Night Shift
• Black Quill Award Best Dark Genre Novel 2009: Duma Key
• Bram Stoker Award
  • Best Novel
    • 1987: Misery
    • 1996: : The Green Mile
    • 1998: : Bag of Bones
    • 2014: Doctor Sleep
  • Best Novellette 1995: "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe"
  • Best Fiction Collection
    • 1990: Four Past Midnight
    • 2009: Just After Sunset
    • 2011: Full Dark, No Stars
  • Best Non-Fiction
    • 2000: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
  • Best Short Fiction
    • 2012: "Herman Wouk is Still Alive"
  • 1995: "Lunch at the Gotham Café"
  • 2000: On Writing
  • 2000: "Riding the Bullet"
  • 2002: Lifetime Achievement Award
  • 2003: The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
  • 2006: Lisey's Story
  • 2008: Duma Key
  • 2008: Just After Sunset
  • 2010: Full Dark, No Stars
  • 2011: "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive"
  • 2013: Doctor Sleep
• British Fantasy Award
  • 1981: Special Award
  • 1982: Cujo
  • 1983: "The Breathing Method"
  • 1987: It
  • 1999: Bag of Bones
  • 2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
• Deutscher Phantastik Preis
  • 2000: Hearts in Atlantis
  • 2001: The Green Mile
  • 2003: Black House
  • 2004: International Author of the Year
  • 2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
• Edgar Award for Best Novel
  • 2015: Mr. Mercedes

• Horror Guild
  • 1997: Desperation
  • 2001: "Riding the Bullet"
  • 2001: On Writing
  • 2002: Black House
  • 2003: From a Buick 8
  • 2003: Everything's Eventual
• Hugo Award 1982: Danse Macabre
• International Horror Guild Awards
  • 1999: Storm of the Century
  • 2003: Living Legend
• Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! (The Best Translated Mystery Fiction of the Year in Japan)
  • 2014: 11/22/63
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize
  • 2011: 11/22/63
• Locus Awards
  • 1982: Danse Macabre
  • 1986: Skeleton Crew
  • 1997: Desperation
  • 1999: Bag of Bones
  • 2001: On Writing
• Mystery Writers of America 2007: Grand Master Award
• National Book Award 2003: Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
• National Magazine Awards
  • 2004: "Rest Stop"
  • 2013: "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation"
• New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age 1982: Firestarter
• O. Henry Award 1996: "The Man in the Black Suit"
• Quill Award 2005: Faithful
• Shirley Jackson Award 2009: "Morality"
• Spokane Public Library Golden Pen Award 1986: Golden Pen Award
• Takarajimasha Award 1st place 11/22/63
• University of Maine 1980: Alumni Career Award
• Us Magazine 1982: Best Fiction Writer of the Year
• World Fantasy Award
  • 1980: Convention Award
  • 1982: "Do the Dead Sing?"
  • 1995: "The Man in the Black Suit"
  • 2004: Lifetime Achievement
• World Horror Convention 1992: World Horror Grandmaster

Carrie was included on the New York Public Library's list of Books of the Century under the category "Pop Culture Mass & Entertainment".

In 2008, On Writing was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly's list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008". It also made Time's list of the 100 greatest non-fiction 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."

King's 11/22/63 was named one of the five best fiction books of the year in The 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."

Bibliography

Main articles: Stephen King bibliography, Stephen King short fiction bibliography, and Unpublished and uncollected works by Stephen King

Audiobooks

• 2000: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-0-7435-0665-6.
• 2004: Salem's Lot (introduction), Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-0-7435-3696-7.
• 2005 (Audible: 2000): Bag of Bones (read by Stephen King). Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-0743551755.
• 2008: Needful Things (read by Stephen King), Highbridge Audio. ISBN 978-1598877540.
• 2012: The Wind Through The Keyhole – A Dark Tower Novel (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-1-4423-4697-0.
• 2016: Desperation (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-1508218661.
• 2018: Elevation (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio. ISBN 978-1508260479.

Filmography

Year	Title	Director	Executive producer	Writer	Actor	Notes
1981	Knightriders	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Hoagie Man
1982	Creepshow	No	No	Yes	Yes	Role: Jordy Verrill
1983	The Dead Zone	No	No	Yes	No
1985	Cat's Eye	No	No	Yes	No
1985	Silver Bullet	No	No	Yes	No
1986	Maximum Overdrive	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Role: Man at Bank ATM
1987	Creepshow 2	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Truck Driver
1987	Tales from the Darkside	No	No	Yes	No	1 episode: "Sorry, Right Number"
1989	Pet Sematary	No	No	Yes	Yes	Role: Minister
1991	Golden Years	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries, also created by King, role: Bus Driver
1992	Sleepwalkers	No	No	Yes	Yes	Role: Cemetery Caretaker
1994	The Stand	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries, role: Teddy Weizak
1995	The Langoliers	No	No	No	Yes	Miniseries, role: Tom Holby
1996	Thinner	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Pharmacist
1997	The Shining	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries, role: Gage Creed
1998	The X-Files	No	No	Yes	No	1 episode: "Chinga"
1999	Storm of the Century	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries, role: Lawyer in Ad / Reporter on Broken TV
1999	Frasier	No	No	No	Yes	1 episode: "Mary Christmas", role: Brian
2000	The Simpsons	No	No	No	Yes	1 episode: "Insane Clown Poppy", role: Himself
2002	Rose Red	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Miniseries, role: Pizza Delivery Guy
2003	The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer	No	Yes	No	No	TV film
2004	Kingdom Hospital	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	9 episodes, also developed by King, role: Johnny B. Goode
2004	Riding the Bullet	No	Yes	No	No
2005	Fever Pitch	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Stephen King
2005	Gotham Cafe	No	No	No	Yes	Short film, role: Mr. Ring
2006	Desperation	No	Yes	Yes	No	TV film
2007	Diary of the Dead	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Newsreader (voice, uncredited)
2010	Sons of Anarchy	No	No	No	Yes	1 episode: "Caregiver", role: Bachman
2012	Stuck in Love	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Stephen King (voice)
2014	Under the Dome	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	1 episode: "Heads Will Roll", role: Diner Patron
2014	A Good Marriage	No	No	Yes	No
2016	11.22.63	No	Yes	No	No
2016	Cell	No	No	Yes	No
2017	Mr. Mercedes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Role: Diner Patron
2018	Castle Rock	No	Yes	No	No
2019	It Chapter Two	No	No	No	Yes	Role: Shopkeeper
2021	Lisey's Story	No	Yes	Yes	No	Miniseries

See also

• List of adaptations of works by Stephen King
• Castle Rock (Stephen King)
• Charles Scribner's Sons (aka Scribner)
• Derry (Stephen King)
• Dollar Baby
• Jerusalem's Lot (Stephen King)
• Haven

Further reading

See also: Books about Stephen King

• Brooks, Justin (2008). Stephen King: A Primary Bibliography of the World's Most Popular Author. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 978-1-58767-153-1.
• Collings, Michael R. (1985). The Many Facets of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-14-3.
• Collings, Michael R.; Engebretson, David A. (1985). The Shorter Works of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-02-X.
• Collings, Michael R. (1985). Stephen King as Richard Bachman. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-00-3.
• Collings, Michael R. (1986). The Films of Stephen King. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-10-0.
• 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. ISBN 0-930261-80-1.
• Collings, Michael R. (1987). The Stephen King Phenomenon. Starmont House. ISBN 0-930261-12-7.
• Collings, Michael R. (2003). Horror Plum'd: An International Stephen King Bibliography and Guide 1960–2000. Overlook Connection Press. ISBN 1-892950-45-6.
• Collings, Michael R. (2008). Stephen King Is Richard Bachman. Overlook Connection Press. ISBN 978-1-892950-74-1.
• Hoppenstand, Gary, ed. (2010). Stephen King. Salem Press. ISBN 978-1-58765-685-9.
• Spignesi, Stephen (1991). The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia. Contemporary Books. ISBN 978-0-8092-3818-7.
• Spignesi, Stephen (1998). The Lost Work of Stephen King. Birch Lane Press. ISBN 978-1-55972-469-2.
• Spignesi, Stephen (2001). The Essential Stephen King. Career Press. ISBN 978-1-56414-710-3.
• Wood, Rocky; Rawsthorne, David; Blackburn, Norma. The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King. Kanrock Partners. ISBN 0-9750593-3-5.
• Wood, Rocky (2006). Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 1-58767-130-1.
• Wood, Rocky; Brooks, Justin. The Stephen King Collector's Guide. Kanrock Partners. ISBN 978-0-9750593-5-7.
• Wood, Rocky; Brooks, Justin (2008). Stephen King: The Non-Fiction. Cemetery Dance. ISBN 978-1-58767-160-9.

External links

• Official website
• Stephen King on Twitter
• Stephen King at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Stephen King at IMDb 
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Working with the King – Shotsmag Ezine Interview with Philippa Pride, King's UK editor
• Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher; Rich, Nathaniel (Fall 2006). "Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189". The Paris Review. Fall 2006 (178).