American · b. 1947
Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, has published more than sixty novels and hundreds of short stories, which have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. He taught high-school English until the success of his first novel, Carrie (1974), let him write full-time. He is the dominant figure in modern horror fiction, but his range runs from the prison novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption to the time-travel novel 11/22/63. The Dark Tower, eight novels written between 1982 and 2012 and opening with The Gunslinger, ties many of his other books into a single multiverse. He also wrote several novels under the pen name Richard Bachman. Few living writers have been adapted as often: Carrie, The Shining, Stand by Me, Misery and It all began as his stories. He received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and the National Medal of Arts in 2015. He lives in Maine, where much of his fiction is set.