Stephen King (born September 21, 1947) is an American writer of contemporary horror
fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and screenplay. More than 350 million
copies of King's novels and short stories collections have been sold
and many of his stories have been adapted for film, television and other
media. King has written a number of books using the pen named Richard
Bachman, and one short story, "The Fifth Quarter",
as John Swithen In 2003 the National Book Foundation awarded King the
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
King's primary inspiration for
writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction
Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical
Pause". King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing
for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization
of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic
with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.
P. Lovecraft collection of short stories that had belonged to his father.
The cover art--an illustration of a monster hiding within the recesses
of a hell-like cavern beneath a tombstone--was, he writes,” the moment
of my life when the dowsing rod suddenly went down hard ... as far as
I was concerned, I was on my way.”
King attended Durham Elementary
School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in Lisbon Falls,
Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of
EC's horror comics; including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute
to the comics in his screenplay for Creep show). He began writing for
fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the
newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine and later
began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had
seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return
the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published
was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over
three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review,
in 1965. That story was published the following year in a revised form
as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories
of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.
