Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author specializing in horror , suspense , supernatural fiction , and related genres, with over 60 novels, numerous short story collections, and works under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Born in Portland, Maine, and raised primarily by his mother after his parents' separation, King sold his first professional short story in 1967 and transitioned to full-time writing following the 1974 success of his debut novel ''Carrie'', amid personal struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction. His bibliography features landmark titles such as ''The Shining'' (1977), ''The Stand'' (1978), and ''It'' (1986), which have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide and inspired extensive adaptations in film, television, and other media. Despite a near-fatal car accident in 1999 that caused severe injuries, King maintained prolific output, including the memoir ''On Writing'' (2000). He has received honors including the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts, affirming his influence on contemporary literature beyond early genre-based critiques.

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine , the second son of Donald Edwin King, a merchant mariner, and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. When King was two years old, his father abandoned the family to purchase textiles, leaving no contact thereafter and forcing the household into financial instability. King's older brother, David, born in 1945, shared this disrupted upbringing, with the siblings relying on their mother's resourcefulness amid frequent relocations driven by her search for employment.

Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, descended from a family with distant ties to the abolitionist Pillsbury lineage, supported her sons through low-wage labor, often holding two or three jobs simultaneously, such as caregiving and factory work, while maintaining a stoic facade by wearing her wedding ring to avoid inquiries about her status. The family resided temporarily in Fort Wayne, Indiana —near paternal relatives—and Stratford, Connecticut , before settling in Durham, Maine , around 1958 when King was 11, where Ruth cared for her aging parents until their deaths. This peripatetic existence in working-class environs exposed the boys to modest rural life in Maine , marked by economic constraints rather than acute deprivation, though King's recurrent childhood ailments, including measles and severe streptococcal infections causing ear abscesses, confined him to bed and fostered early imaginative escapism .

A pivotal trauma occurred around age four near Durham's railroad tracks, where King witnessed a playmate struck and killed by a freight train ; he retained no conscious memory of the event, learning of it later from his mother, an experience that repressed recollection and may have subliminally seeded his recurring motifs of sudden, inexplicable loss. The family's limited resources nonetheless permitted access to formative media: shared pulp magazines , EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt —which King credited with honing his affinity for moralistic horror vignettes—and B-movies screened locally or via television, influences drawn from sibling exchanges and community theaters amid Maine's insular, forested backdrop. These elements, compounded by pet losses and sibling dynamics in a fatherless home , empirically grounded King's nascent worldview in tangible perils of isolation and mortality, distinct from later professional output.

Stephen King attended Lisbon High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine , graduating in 1966. During his high school years, he contributed to the school newspaper, Dave's Rag , marking his initial forays into writing. His first professional short story sale occurred in 1967, when "The Glass Floor" was accepted by Startling Mystery Stories for $35, though it appeared in print in 1970.