Born as Stephen Edwin King on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine, Stephen attended the University of Maine at Orono, Maine. Here he wrote a column for his university newspaper, ‘the Maine Campus’; the column was titled ‘King’s Garbage Truck’. On completion of his studies, King’ first full time job was as a professor of English at the Hampden Academy located in Maine.
While he worked as a professor, he and his family lived in a trailer. It was during this time that he started writing short stories which were published in men’s magazines. One of his first ideas for a novel was a plot that revolved around a girl with psychic powers. However, he abandoned the plot after being discouraged; he was later encouraged by his wife Tabitha to refine the plot further and create a novel out of it. He named the novel ‘Carrie’, on its completion he sent it to Doubleday publishers without expecting any positive response. The value of ‘Carrie’ was realized by the publishers and it became King’s first high selling novel.
Today King is world renowned for his novels; his forte has always been horror. The list of novels written by him includes ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’, ‘From a Buick 8’, ‘Dreamcatcher’, ‘Four Past Midnight’, ‘The Tommyknockers’, ‘Fire Starter’, ‘Needful Things’, ‘The Dead Zone’, and ‘Thinner’. A larger percentage of his novels have been recreated into Hollywood flicks namely ‘The Shining’, ‘Children of the Corn’, ‘Pet Sematary’, ‘The Green Mile’, ‘The Rage: Carrie 2’, and ‘Secret Window’. 2007 will witness the release of more films based on King’s works such as ‘Bag of Bones’, ‘Cell’, and ‘The Talisman’. King received The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, in 2003. |
