Meet the author!

STEPHEN KING (1947 - present)

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947 in Portland, ME, U.S.) is one of the most acclaimed horror writers in his genre. He has written almost 100 works, and he has been nominated for 170 awards during his career. 

King graduated from the University of Maine in 1970, and later worked in different jobs, while he wrote his first novel, Carrie, which was a huge success the minute it was published, in 1974. He has been interested in writing since he was very young. In fact, he wrote some short stories which were published in the newspaper. He explains this in his autobiographical work, On Writing - this is an account of his early youth and beginnings as a writer, but it is also a "manual" on how to be a good writer. He explains: 

"One day late in my final semester at college, finals over and at loose ends, I recalled the dyehouse guy’s story about the rats under the mill—big as cats, goddam, some as big as dogs—and started writing a story called “Graveyard Shift.” I was only passing the time on a late spring afternoon, but two months later Cavalier magazine bought the story for two hundred dollars. I had sold two other stories previous to this, but they had brought in a total of just sixty-five dollars. This was three times that, and at a single stroke. It took my breath away, it did. I was rich." (King, 1999, 60)

His books belong to many different genres, for example horror, thrillers, detective novels, adventure, etc. Amongst his most acclaimed works are The Dark Tower series, IT, The Shining, or Misery. Many of his works have been adapted to cinema, although not all the adaptations please the author, who has been known to express his discontent when some of the adaptations were not as good as he expected them to be.

Reference list:

King, Stephen. On Writing. New York: Scribner, 1999.

Skibinski, Christian. Stephen King: Biography. s.f. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000175/bio (last accessed: 18 de May de 2018).

Stephen King: American novelist. 01 de March de 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-King (last accessed: 18 de May de 2018).