Prolific and iconic storyteller Stephen King was born in Maine 1947, he is the son of Donald King and Nellie Pillsbury. His parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his father was pretty absent his whole childhood, therefore he was raised by his mother. He graduated from the University of Maine, Orono where he got his Bachelor of Arts degree in English. As a college student he often worked in Fogler Library, where he met his wife, Tabitha Spruce. He and Tabitha were married in January of 1971, later on, they had three children: Naomi Rachel, Joe Hill, and Owen Phillip, collectively, he had four grandchildren. He began teaching high school English at Hampden Academy, Maine in 1971, at the end of 1973, he moved him and his family to Southern Maine to be closer to his ill mother. Come 1977, the Kings spent a few months in England, cut their trip short, and moved back to Maine in Center Lovell, after one summer, they moved to Orrington only to come back to Center Lovell in 1979. King is now 78 years old, is 6’4”, weighs 200 lbs, blue eyed, fair-skinned, and has thick, black hair, with frosted white in his beard. He and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the rest of the year at their homes in Bangor and Center Lovell, Maine.
Stephen King was a jack of many trades as a child, particularly writing. When King was around 6 or 7 he would write stories to pass time, he favored writing stories by using images, sometimes from specific experiences, because that was all he knew how to do at that time. Another major influence was film, when he watched “Bambi” with his mother he thought the most interesting part was the forest fire. This introduced the idea that he was more interested in what people feared, chaos, disruption, change, King is interested in all of it while most are afraid of it. He’s interested in experiences that are real, things that could really happen. When he was 12 King developed an interest in adult fiction, he went from reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to reading Ed McBain, he enjoyed the raw, intense, real experiences he could indulge in. He was interested in a wide range of stories, and wasn’t particular about what he was reading. In “The Paris Interview” he states, “Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.” Adult fiction introduced him to different understandings that he couldn’t obtain by reading books that were his age, for example, women’s literature and naturalism. This taught King how to take real stories, along with his own imagination, and piece them together in some way to create a story that would, quote, “...be a kind of personal assault”. King was infatuated with being able to leave his readers uncomfortable with his stories, for example, for his book “Cujo” he wanted it to be compared to a brick being thrown through a window. He believed genres weren’t a legible ideal to believe in, and compared it to kids not wanting to eat their food because it’s touching each other. He uses this analogy to describe how people are like those kids because those kids are unwilling to try something new because their foods are touching, just like people don’t give books that have more than one genre in the book as much as a chance as books with one genre.
King’s writing is seen as an “astute chronicler of contemporary American life…” (LA RB), he’s often seen as a controversial character; he’s loved by fans, and sniffed at by critics. He is often compared to as Walt Disney’s evil twin, by being the guy who made the children eating clown and a haunted amusement park. However, King believes that Disney also has a Stephen King side, by creating the forest fire in “Bambi”, and the Evil Queen in “Snow White”, Disney shows his darker side that King connects to more. By pointing this out, King is able to make a point that evil has to come from somewhere, that evil is controlled by an outside source. For example, in his book “The Exorcist”, he finds, “...there is something comforting about the fact that the little girl pushed the movie director out of the window ad killed him because she was inhabited by the demon, Pazuzu” (CBS NEWS). When it comes to writing his stories, King describes his process as “disappearing into his head”, “I’m not in that room. I’m not there. I disappear completely” (CBS NEWS). He is describing that when he actually sits down to write his stories, he is so engulfed in his writing that he doesn’t feel like he is mentally there and that he is just a part of the story. He reaches this flow state, that while he may be in the most boring room possible, his head is compared to a projector, and once he has an idea, he is all into in completely. He is a devoted, immersive, remarkable writer, who has won numerous awards for his work: National Medal of Arts, awarded by President Barack Obama, Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, presented by the National Book Foundation, PEN America Literary Service Award, honoring an author whose work embodies the mission to champion humanity and oppose repression, and a Grand Master Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America.