Stephen King, in full Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947, Portland, Maine, U.S.), American novelist and short-story writer whose books were credited with reviving the genre of horror fiction in the late 20th century.
King graduated from the University of Maine in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English. While writing short stories he supported himself by teaching and working as a janitor, among other jobs. His first published novel, Carrie, about a tormented teenage girl gifted with telekinetic powers, appeared in 1974 (film 1976 and 2013) and was an immediate popular success.
Carrie was the first of many novels in which King blended horror, the macabre, fantasy, and science fiction. Among such works were ’Salem’s Lot (1975; TV miniseries 1979 and 2004); The Shining (1977; film 1980; TV miniseries 1997); The Stand (1978; TV miniseries 1994); The Dead Zone (1979; film 1983; TV series 2002–07); Firestarter (1980; film 1984); Cujo (1981; film 1983); The Running Man (1982; film 1987); Christine (1983; film 1983); Thinner (1984; film 1996); It (1986; TV miniseries 1990); Misery (1987; film 1990); The Tommyknockers (1987; TV miniseries 1993); The Dark Half (1989; film 1993); Needful Things (1991; film 1993); Dolores Claiborne (1993; film 1995); Dreamcatcher (2001; film 2003); Cell and Lisey’s Story (both 2006); Duma Key (2008); Under the Dome (2009; TV series 2013–15); 11/22/63 (2011); Joyland (2013); Doctor Sleep (2013), a sequel to The Shining; and Revival (2014). King published several of those works, including The Dead Zone and The Running Man, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. A collection of the first four Bachman novels, The Bachman Books (1985), contains the essay “Why I Was Bachman.” Mr. Mercedes (2014) and Finders Keepers (2015) were the first two installments of a trilogy of hard-boiled crime novels. King also wrote a serial novel, The Dark Tower, whose first installment, The Gunslinger, appeared in 1982; an eighth volume was published in 2012.
In his books King explored almost every terror-producing theme imaginable, from vampires, rabid dogs, deranged killers, and a pyromaniac to ghosts, extrasensory perception and telekinesis, biological warfare, and even a malevolent automobile. In his later fiction, exemplified by Dolores Claiborne, King departed from the horror genre to provide sharply detailed psychological portraits of his protagonists, many of them women, who confront difficult and challenging circumstances. Though his work was sometimes disparaged as undisciplined and inelegant, King was a talented storyteller whose books gained their effect from realistic detail, forceful plotting, and the author’s undoubted ability to involve and scare the reader. His work consistently addressed such themes as the potential for politics and technology to disrupt or even destroy an individual human life. Obsession, the forms it can assume, and its power to wreck individuals, families, and whole communities was a recurring theme in King’s fiction, driving the narratives of Christine, Misery, and Needful Things.
By the early 1990s King’s books had sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and his name had become synonymous with the genre of horror fiction. His short fiction was collected in such volumes as Night Shift (1978), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), Hearts in Atlantis (1999; film 2001), Just After Sunset (2008), and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015). He wrote several motion-picture screenplays. Some of his novels were adapted for the screen by such directors as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, and Rob Reiner. King explored both his own career and the craft of writing in On Writing (2000), a book he completed as he was recovering from severe injuries received after being struck by a car. King experimented with different forms of book distribution: The Plant: Zenith Rising was released in 2000 solely as an e-book, distributed via the Internet, with readers asked but not required to pay for it, and the novella UR was made available in 2009 only to users of the Kindle electronic reading device. The short story “Drunken Fireworks” was released in 2015 as an audiobook prior to its print publication.
King received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and the National Medal of Arts in 2015.
