Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated he and his older brother, David, started to travel around the country with his mother to places like New York, Chicago, Wiscosin, etc. When finally they decided to return to Maine. There he started to write some stories and he graduated in 1966. When he started the University of Maine he wrote a column for the school newspaper, The Main Campus.He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate.He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school levelHe and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in the Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students. 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.In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.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. Renting a summer home on Sebago Lake in North Windham for the winter, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem's Lot, before it became 'Salem's Lot, in a small room in the garage. During this period, Stephen's mother died of cancer, at the age of 59. Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which 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. In 1977, the Kings spent three months in England.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.The Kings have three children: Naomi Rachel, Joe Hill and Owen Phillip, and three grandchildren.Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen and Tabitha provide scholarships for local high school students and contribute to many other local and national charities.
By Milagros Beistain and Rodrigo Llauradó
