2007 Edgar® Nominees
Grand MasterStephen KingStephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, spending most his childhood in Durham From his sophomore year at the University of Maine, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, and was active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional.After graduation (qualified to teach on the high school level), a draft board pronounced him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971.. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines. Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to "Startling Mystery Stories" in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. While teaching high school English, Stephen wrote in the evenings and on the weekends on short stories and novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother's Day of that year, Stephen learned that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time. At the end of the summer of 1973, the Kings moved their growing family to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's failing health. There, in a small room in the garage, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem's Lot, before it became Salem's Lot. Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings moved to Boulder, where Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, the Kings purchased a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine. At that house, Stephen finished writing The Stand, much of which also is set in Boulder. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton. In 1977, the Kings spent three months of a projected year-long stay in England, cut the sojourn short and returned home in mid-December, eventually settling in Orrington, near Bangor, so that Stephen could teach creative writing at the University of Maine. In 1980, the Kings purchased a second home in Bangor, retaining the Center Lovell house as a summer home. Because their children have become adults, Stephen and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the remainder of the year at their Bangor and Center Lovell homes. Stephen is of Scots-Irish ancestry, stands 6'4" and weighs about 200 pounds. He is blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and has thick, black hair, with a frost of white most noticeable in his beard, which he sometimes wears between the end of the World Series and the opening of baseball spring training in Florida. Occasionally he wears a moustache in other seasons. He has worn glasses since he was a child. He has put some of his college dramatic society experience to use doing cameos in several of the film adaptations of his works as well as a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders. Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen made his directorial debut, as well as writing the screenplay, for the movie Maximum Overdrive (an adaptation of his short story "Trucks") in 1985. Stephen and Tabitha provide scholarships for local high school students and contribute to many other local and national charities. Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. |
