When Stephen was 11, he moved back to Maine with his mother and brother. The family settled in Durham. Stephen attended Durham Elementary School and later Lisbon Falls High School, where he graduated from in 1966. He stayed close to home for college by attending the University of Maine at Orono. There, he wrote a column for the school\u2019s newspaper and worked in the student library. He also served in student government and attended campus protests against the Vietnam War<\/a>.<\/p>\n While in college, Stephen published his first short story, \u201cThe Glass Door,\u201d which appeared in the fall 1967 issue of the pulp science-fiction magazine Startling Mystery Stories. During summer breaks, he made extra money working as a janitor at a local school.<\/p>\n After graduating with a degree in English in 1970, he tried to find a position as a teacher but initially had no luck. Stephen took a job in a laundry until late 1971, when he began working as an English teacher at Hampden Academy. All the while, he continued to write and publish short stories in his spare time. Soon, he left teaching behind entirely.<\/p>\n Books<\/p>\n To date, King has published 69 novels, 24 novellas, as well as more than 200 short stories. His books have sold some 350 million to 400 million copies worldwide. His massive success all began in 1973 when he sold his first novel.<\/p>\n Stephen King nearly gave up on the draft that became his first published novel, Carrie. The best-selling author has now written more than 65 books. Getty Images<\/p>\n Early Works: Carrie, Salem\u2019s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand<\/p>\n Carrie, the tale of a bullied teenage girl who gets revenge on her peers, was the book that first launched King to fame. Before he sold the novel, he nearly abandoned it altogether. He wrote three pages of what was then a short story, but unsatisfied, he tossed it in the trash. Later on, however, his wife read the crumpled draft and convinced him to continue working on it. King soon expanded the story into a novel by drawing inspiration from real-life experiences as well as supernatural elements. \u201cTwo unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together, and I had an idea,\u201d he later reflected<\/a> in his 2000 book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft<\/a>.<\/p>\n King\u2019s brief stint as a school janitor, when he was responsible for cleaning the curtainless shower in the girls\u2019 locker room, inspired the book\u2019s start. \u201cI started seeing the opening scene of a story: girls showering in a locker room where there were no U-rings, pink plastic curtains or privacy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnd this one girl starts to have her period. Only she doesn\u2019t know what it is, and the other girls\u2014grossed out, horrified, amused\u2014start pelting her with sanitary napkins.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrie was published in 1974, and the book became a huge success, allowing him to devote himself to writing full-time. King soon followed up with Salem\u2019s Lot, about a writer who returns to his hometown in Maine only to find that the residents are turning into vampires. He first came up with the idea for the book while he was teaching Bram Stoker<\/a>\u2019s Dracula to his students. The book was originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem\u2019s Lot, before King settled on Salem\u2019s Lot.<\/p>\n Before his second novel published in 1975, King\u2019s mother died of cancer. The author and his family subsequently moved to Boulder, Colorado. His new home became the backdrop for The Shining, which follows an alcoholic writer who moves to Colorado with his wife and kids to work as a caretaker at an isolated hotel in the mountains. The plot was inspired by a nightmare King had while staying at a hotel in Estes Park with his wife.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought that it seemed the perfect\u2014maybe the archetypical\u2014setting for a ghost story,\u201d he wrote on his website<\/a>. \u201cThat night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose.\u201d When King woke up, he smoked a cigarette and stared out at the Rocky Mountains through his hotel window. \u201cBy the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind,\u201d he added. Released in 1977, The Shining was an instant bestseller.<\/p>\n King next published The Stand in 1978. The post-apocalyptic fantasy centers around the aftermath of a deadly influenza pandemic. A news segment on biological warfare served as the catalyst for the book. \u201cI never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on his website. \u201cThat got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah that killed a bunch of sheep… I remembered a news reporter saying, \u2018If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n More popular novels followed, including The Dead Zone (1979), Firestarter (1980), Cujo (1981), Pet Sematary (1983), IT (1986), and Misery (1987).<\/p>\n Richard Bachman Novels: The Long Walk and The Running Man<\/p>\n While creating stories about vicious, rabid dogs and sewer-dwelling monsters\u2014as seen in Cujo and IT, respectively\u2014King published several books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman out of concern that the public wouldn\u2019t accept more than one book from an author within a year. He came up with the pen name after seeing a novel by Richard Stark on his desk coupled with what he heard playing on his record player at the time: \u201cYou Ain\u2019t Seen Nothin\u2019 Yet\u201d by Bachman Turner Overdrive.<\/p>\n King wrote a total of seven Bachman novels, including the 1979 dystopian thriller The Long Walk, about teenage boys forced to participate in a grueling, deadly walking contest by a totalitarian regime. He had first started writing it in college against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. \u201cYou write from your times, so certainly, that was in my mind. But I never thought about it consciously,\u201d King told Vanity Fair<\/a> in May 2025. \u201cI was writing a kind of a brutal thing. It was hopeless, and just what you write when you\u2019re 19 years old, man. You\u2019re full of beans and you\u2019re full of cynicism, and that\u2019s the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n One of his other successful books under the Bachman alias was The Running Man (1982). In the dystopian novel, a father participates in a deadly reality show to win money to pay for his daughter\u2019s life-saving medication. A few years later, in 1985, King confirmed he was Bachman after a reader contacted his publisher about the similarities in writing style.<\/p>\n Continued Success: Doctor Sleep, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider<\/p>\n The 1990s saw the prolific author continue to churn out books. Among the most popular were Gerald\u2019s Game (1992), The Green Mile series from 1996, Bag of Bones (1998), and additional installments in The Dark Tower series that he had begun in the previous decade.<\/p>\n After Lisey\u2019s Story (2006) and Under the Dome (2009), King published 11\/22\/63, a speculative novel from 2011 involving time travel as part of an effort to stop the assassination<\/a> of President John F. Kennedy<\/a>. Two years later, he wrote Joyland, a pulp-fiction style thriller that takes readers on a journey to uncovering who\u2019s behind an unsolved murder.<\/p>\n Also in 2013, the King surprised audiences with Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. What came as little surprise, however, was that Doctor Sleep hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. \u201cI\u2019ve been typed as a horror writer, but I never saw myself that way,\u201d King told Parade<\/a> at the time. \u201cI\u2019ve reached a point in my life where I can write pretty much what comes into my mind and not worry about grocery day at Publix.\u201d<\/p>\n The author then published Mr. Mercedes (2014). It was the first book of a crime trilogy rounded out by 2015\u2019s Finders Keepers and 2016\u2019s End of Watch. In honor of his prolific output and success in his craft, King was among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2015. Two years later, he teamed with his son Owen to deliver Sleeping Beauties, about a mysterious pandemic that leaves women enveloped in cocoons. King returned to the supernatural in 2018 with The Outsider, revolving around an investigation into a creature that mimics people\u2019s appearances to commit heinous crimes.<\/p>\n Recent Works: The Institute and Never Flinch Stephen King\u2019s career has stretched more than 50 years. His most recent book, Never Flinch, arrived in May 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n The year 2019 brought the publication of the tireless writer\u2019s 61st novel, The Institute, about children with supernatural abilities who are taken from their parents and incarcerated by a mysterious organization.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the challenges when you\u2019ve been around as long as I have and you think you\u2019ve explored all the corners of the room, you have to say to yourself, \u2018What are the things that really concern me? What are the things that I care about?\u2019\u201d King told The New York Times<\/a> that September. \u201cWell, I care about friendship. I care about a government that\u2019s too big and that will try to do things where the ends justify the means. I care about defenseless people who try to find a way to defend themselves. All those things are in The Institute.\u201d<\/p>\n With so many titles to his name, it was perhaps only a matter of time that King\u2019s work would be used to train AI models. After a report revealed just that, King wrote an essay in The Atlantic<\/a> in August 2023 about his stance on the issue. In the article, he shared he is skeptical of the technology\u2019s ability to write quality fiction but noted he wasn\u2019t opposed to its development. \u201cCreativity can\u2019t happen without sentience, and there are now arguments that some AIs are indeed sentient,\u201d King wrote. \u201cIf that is true now or in the future, then creativity might be possible. I view this possibility with a certain dreadful fascination.\u201d<\/p>\n The discovery hasn\u2019t slowed his own output. King\u2019s most recent works include Fairy Tale (2022), Holly (2023), and Never Flinch (2025).<\/p>\n Movie and TV Adaptations<\/p>\n Throughout his prolific career, many of King\u2019s works have been adapted into movies and TV shows, starting with the Carrie film adaption in 1976. Soon after, the film The Shining, released in 1980 and starring Jack Nicholson<\/a> and Shelley Duvall<\/a>, became a renowned horror-thriller that has stood the test of time. From there, Cujo and Firestarter were released for the big screen in 1983 and 1984 respectively, while It debuted as a miniseries in 1990.<\/p>\n Publishing novels and stories at a breakneck speed, King\u2019s thrilling tales continued to be used as the basis of numerous films for the big and small screens. In 1987, he earned his first Richard Bachman adaptation with The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/a>. Actors Kathy Bates<\/a> and James Caan starred in the critically and commercially successful adaptation of Misery in 1990, with Bates winning an Oscar for her performance as the psychotic Annie Wilkes.<\/p>\n Four years later, The Shawshank Redemption, based on one of his stories and starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman<\/a>, became another acclaimed movie with multiple Oscar nominations. Also in 1994, King\u2019s earlier novel The Stand was adapted into a miniseries with Molly Ringwald<\/a> and Gary Sinise in the lead. At the end of the decade, Tom Hanks<\/a> and Michael Clarke Duncan<\/a> took on King\u2019s prison-based tale from his serialized outing The Green Mile in a 1999 movie of the same name.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, adaptations of King\u2019s books have continued to populate the big and small screens. In 2017, the first season of Mr. Mercedes began airing on the Audience Network, while a remake of the horror classic IT enjoyed a hefty box-office haul. In 2019, an adaptation of Doctor Sleep and IT Chapter Two hit theaters, along with a reboot of another signature King property, Pet Sematary. The following year, The Stand was remade into another miniseries, starring James Marsden, while The Outsider landed at HBO as a slow-burn TV series. In 2021, Lisey\u2019s Story was turned into a limited series for Apple TV+ starring Julianne Moore<\/a>. Three years later, in 2024, Salem\u2019s Lot, which was previously made into TV shows in both 1979 and 2004, received its first film adaptation.<\/p>\n The flood of King-originated work has continued in 2025. The Monkey and The Life of Chuck, based on short stories of the same names, arrived in theaters. In September, the Bachman novel The Long Walk made it to the big screen, with Mark Hamill<\/a> playing the authoritarian antagonist the Major. And in November, Glen Powell<\/a> is set to star in the remake of The Running Man.<\/p>\n Personal Life: Band and Addiction Issues Stephen King performs with the Rock Bottom Remainders at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum in 1995. Getty Images<\/p>\n Outside of writing, King is a big music fan. He sang and played guitar in a band called Rock Bottom Remainders with fellow authors Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, and Amy Tan<\/a>, among others. The group, which was active from 1992 to 2012, performed at a number of venues across the country, including the Miami Book Fair and New York City\u2019s Webster Hall. They also played at several charity events over the years.<\/p>\n The Carrie author has also contended with darker times. At the height of his career in the 1970s, King began abusing drugs and alcohol. It became routine for him to write sober during the day and edit at night while he was inebriated. Eventually, the author started using cocaine and showing up to his son\u2019s baseball games with a drink in hand.<\/p>\n \u201cAs time went on, I started to fumble a lot of the balls,\u201d he told The Guardian<\/a> in September 2013. \u201cI had a busy public life, and a lot of those things got a bit ragged by the end.\u201d In the late 1980s, however, King\u2019s family staged an intervention, which led him to get the help he needed. He has now been sober for around 36 years.<\/p>\n Car Accident<\/p>\n In June 1999, King was struck by the driver of a van<\/a> while out on a walk in Maine. The accident left him severely injured; he sustained a gash on his scalp, broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured right hip. Additionally, his leg was broken in several places. After three weeks in the hospital, King returned home in July but later required another surgery. It took him a while to recover, but the crash didn\u2019t stop him from writing for very long. With the help of his wife, he returned to his work by the end of the month.<\/p>\n Wife Tabitha King and Children Stephen and Tabitha King have been married for more than 54 years. They share three children, including their son Owen. Getty Images<\/p>\n King is married to novelist Tabitha King. The couple first met at the University of Maine in 1969 while working in the school\u2019s library. They married in January 1971.<\/p>\n Tabitha has always been fully supportive of Stephen\u2019s writing career. From early on in their marriage, she encouraged him to pursue his passion, read his drafts<\/a> to give him feedback, and worked extra shifts to help support their family. Following his 1999 car accident, which left him seriously injured, Tabitha set up a makeshift desk<\/a> in their home so he could continue writing from his wheelchair.<\/p>\n \u201cTabby always knew what I was supposed to be doing, and she believed that I would succeed at it,\u201d he said during his acceptance speech<\/a> for the National Book Foundation\u2019s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003.<\/p>\n Stephen and Tabitha share three children together: Naomi, born in June 1970; Joe, born in June 1972; and Owen, born in 1977. Today, Naomi is a reverend. The couple\u2019s sons, however, have followed after their parents to become writers. Using the pen name Joe Hill, Joe King is a lauded horror author in his own right. Owen\u2019s first collection of stories was published in 2005, and he later worked with his father to write the 2017 novel Sleeping Beauties.<\/p>\n To date, Stephen and his wife have been married for more than 54 years. They currently divide their time between Maine and Florida.<\/p>\n Net Worth<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/344777b33783e3bbcb392a539bbe3b3b.jpeg\"\/)
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