KING, Stephen (Edwin) 1947-

(Richard Bachman, Eleanor Druse, Steve King, John Swithen)

PERSONAL: Born September 21, 1947, in Portland, ME; son of Donald (a merchant sailor) and Nellie Ruth (Pillsbury) King; married Tabitha Jane Spruce (a novelist), January 2, 1971; children: Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hill, Owen Phillip. Education: University of Maine at Orono, B.Sc., 1970. Politics: Democrat. Hobbies and other interests: Reading (mostly fiction), jigsaw puzzles, playing the guitar ("I'm terrible and so try to bore no one but myself"), movies, bowling.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Arthur Greene, 101 Park Ave., New York, NY 10178.

CAREER: Writer. Has worked as a janitor, a laborer in an industrial laundry, and in a knitting mill. Hampden Academy (high school), Hampden, ME, English teacher, 1971-73; University of Maine, Orono, writer-in-residence, 1978-79. Owner, Philtrum Press (publishing house), and WZON-AM (rock 'n' roll radio station), Bangor, ME. Has made cameo appearances in films, including Knightriders, 1981, Creepshow, 1982, Maximum Overdrive, 1986, Pet Sematary, 1989, and The Stand, 1994; has also appeared in American Express credit card television commercial. Served as judge for 1977 World Fantasy Awards, 1978. Participated in radio honor panel with George A. Romero, Peter Straub, and Ira Levin, moderated by Dick Cavett, WNET, 1980.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Screen Artists Guild, Screen Writers of America, Writers Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS: Carrie named to School Library Journal's Book List, 1975; World Fantasy Award nominations, 1976, for Salem's Lot, 1979, for The Stand and Night Shift, 1980, for The Dead Zone, 1981, for "The Mist," and 1983, for "The Breathing Method: A Winter's Tale," in Different Seasons; Hugo Award nomination, World Science Fiction Society, and Nebula Award nomination, Science Fiction Writers of America, both 1978, both for The Shining; Balrog Awards, second place in best novel category, for The Stand, and second place in best collection category for Night Shift, both 1979; named to the American Library Association's list of best books for young adults, 1979, for The Long Walk, and 1981, for Firestarter; World Fantasy Award, 1980, for contributions to the field, and 1982, for story "Do the Dead Sing?"; Career Alumni Award, University of Maine at Orono, 1981; Nebula Award nomination, Science Fiction Writers of America, 1981, for story "The Way Station"; special British Fantasy Award for outstanding contribution to the genre, British Fantasy Society, 1982, for Cujo; Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1982, for Stephen King's Danse Macabre; named Best Fiction Writer of the Year, Us Magazine, 1982; Locus Award for best collection, Locus Publications, 1986, for Stephen King's Skeleton Crew; Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Horror Writers Association, 1988, for Misery; Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection, 1991, for Four Past Midnight; World Fantasy award for short story, 1995, for The Man in the Black Suit; Bram Stoker Award for Best Novelette, Horror Writers Association, 1996, for Lunch at the Gotham Cafe; O. Henry Award, 1996, for "The Man in the Black Suit"; Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, 1997, for The Green Mile; Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, 1999, for Bag of Bones; Bram Stoker Award nominee in novel category (with Peter Straub), 2001, for Black House; Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, National Book Award, 2003; The Stand was voted one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read, 2003.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974, movie edition published as Carrie, New American Library/Times Mirror (New York, NY), 1975, published in a limited edition with introduction by Tabitha King, Plume (New York, NY), 1991.

Salem's Lot (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1975, television edition, New American Library (New York, NY), 1979, published in a limited edition with introduction by Clive Barker, Plume (New York, NY), 1991.

The Shining (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1977, movie edition, New American Library (New York, NY), 1980, published in a limited edition with introduction by Ken Follett, Plume (New York, NY), 1991.

The Stand (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1978, enlarged and expanded edition published as The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1990.

The Dead Zone (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1979, movie edition published as The Dead Zone: Movie Tie-In, New American Library (New York, NY), 1980.

Firestarter (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1980, with afterword by King, 1981, published in a limited, aluminum-coated, asbestos-cloth edition, Phantasia Press (Huntington Woods, MI), 1980.

Cujo (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1981, published in limited edition, Mysterious Press (New York, NY), 1981.

Pet Sematary (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1983.

Christine (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1983, published in a limited edition, illustrated by Stephen Gervais, Donald M. Grant (Hampton Falls, NH), 1983.

(With Peter Straub) The Talisman, Viking Press/Putnam (New York, NY), 1984, published in a limited two-volume edition, Donald M. Grant (Hampton Falls, NH), 1984.

The Eyes of the Dragon (young adult), limited edition, illustrated by Kenneth R. Linkhauser, Philtrum Press, 1984, new edition, illustrated by David Palladini, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

It (also see below), limited German edition published as Es, Heyne (Munich), 1986, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

Misery (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

The Tommyknockers (also see below), Putnam (New York, NY), 1987.

The Dark Half (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

Needful Things (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1991.

Gerald's Game, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

Dolores Claiborne (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1993.

Insomnia, Viking (New York, NY), 1994.

Rose Madder, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.

The Green Mile (serialized novel), Signet (New York, NY), Chapter 1, "The Two Dead Girls" (also see below), Chapter 2, "The Mouse on the Mile," Chapter 3, "Coffey's Hands," Chapter 4, "The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix," Chapter 5, "Night Journey," Chapter 6, "Coffey on the Mile," March-August, 1996, published as The Green Mile: A Novel in Six Parts, Plume (New York, NY), 1997.

Desperation, Viking (New York, NY), 1996.

(And author of foreword) The Two Dead Girls, Signet (New York, NY), 1996.

Bag of Bones, Viking (New York, NY), 1998.

Hearts in Atlantis, G. K. Hall (Thorndike, ME), 1999.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.

Dreamcatcher, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Peter Straub) Black House (sequel to The Talisman), Random House (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor) Ridley Pearson, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life As Rose Red, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2001.

From a Buick 8, Scribner (New York, NY), 2002.

(Under name Eleanor Druse) The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of early unpublished novels "Sword in the Darkness" (also referred to as "Babylon Here"), "The Cannibals," and "Blaze," a reworking of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

"THE DARK TOWER" SERIES

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (also see below), Amereon (New York, NY), 1976, published asThe Gunslinger, New American Library (New York, NY), 1988, published in limited edition, illustrated by Michael Whelan, Donald M. Grant (Hampton Falls, NH), 1982, 2nd limited edition, 1984, revised and expanded edition, Viking (New York, NY), 2003.

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (also see below), illustrated by Phil Hale, New American Library (New York, NY), 1989.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (also see below), illustrated by Ned Dameron, Donald M. Grant (Hampton Falls, NH), 1991.

The Dark Tower Trilogy: The Gunslinger; The Drawing of the Three; The Waste Lands (box set), New American Library (New York, NY), 1993.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, Plume (New York, NY), 1997.

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, Plume (New York, NY), 2003.

The Dark Tower VI: The Songs of Susannah, Donald M. Grant (Hampton Falls, NH), 2004.

The Dark Tower VII, Scribner (New York, NY), 2004.

NOVELS; UNDER PSEUDONYM RICHARD BACHMAN

Rage (also see below), New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1977.

The Long Walk (also see below), New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1979.

Roadwork: A Novel of the First Energy Crisis (also see below) New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1981.

The Running Man (also see below), New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1982.

Thinner, New American Library (New York, NY), 1984.

The Regulators, Dutton (New York, NY), 1996.

SHORT FICTION

(Under name Steve King) The Star Invaders (privately printed stories), Triad/Gaslight Books (Durham, ME), 1964.

Night Shift (story collection; also see below), introduction by John D. MacDonald, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1978, published as Night Shift: Excursions into Horror, New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1979.

Different Seasons (novellas; contains Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal [also see below]; Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption; The Body: Fall from Innocence; and The Breathing Method: A Winter's Tale), Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

Cycle of the Werewolf (novella; also see below), illustrated by Berni Wrightson, limited portfolio edition published with "Berni Wrightson: An Appreciation," Land of Enchantment (Westland, MI), 1983, enlarged edition including King's screenplay adaptation published as Stephen King's Silver Bullet, New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1985.

Stephen King's Skeleton Crew (story collection), illustrated by J. K. Potter, Viking (New York, NY), 1985, limited edition, Scream Press, 1985.

My Pretty Pony, illustrated by Barbara Kruger, Knopf (New York, NY), 1989, limited edition, Library Fellows of New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989.

Four Past Midnight (contains "The Langoliers," "Secret Window, Secret Garden," "The Library Policeman," and "The Sun Dog"; also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Viking (New York, NY), 1993.

Lunch at the Gotham Cafe, published in Dark Love: Twenty-two All Original Tales of Lust and Obsession, edited by Nancy Collins, Edward E. Kramer, and Martin Harry Greenberg, ROC (New York, NY), 1995.

Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, Scribner (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of short stories "Slade" (a western), "The Man in the Black Suit," 1996, and, under pseudonym John Swithen, "The Fifth Quarter." Contributor of short story "Squad D" to Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions; contributor of short story "Autopsy Room Four" to Robert Bloch's Psychos, edited by Robert Bloch. Also contributor to anthologies and collections, including The Year's Finest Fantasy, edited by Terry Carr, Putnam (New York, NY), 1978; Shadows, edited by Charles L. Grant, Doubleday (New York, NY), Volume 1, 1978, Volume 4, 1981; New Terrors, edited by Ramsey Campbell, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1982; World Fantasy Convention 1983, edited by Robert Weinberg, Weird Tales, 1983; The Writer's Handbook, edited by Sylvia K. Burack, Writer (Boston, MA), 1984; The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell, Doherty Associates, 1987; Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror, by Douglas E. Winter, New American Library (New York, NY), 1988; and Dark Visions, Gollancz (London, England), 1989.

SCREENPLAYS

Stephen King's Creep Show: A George A. Romero Film (based on King's stories "Father's Day," "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" [previously published as "Weeds"], "The Crate," and "They're Creeping Up on You"; released by Warner Bros. as Creepshow, 1982), illustrated by Berni Wrightson and Michele Wrightson, New American Library (New York, NY), 1982.

Cat's Eye (based on King's stories "Quitters, Inc.," "The Ledge," and "The General"), Metro Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1984.

Stephen King's Silver Bullet (based on and published with King's novella Cycle of the Werewolf; released by Paramount Pictures/Dino de Laurentiis's North Carolina Film Corp., 1985), illustrated by Berni Wrightson, New American Library/Signet (New York, NY), 1985.

(And director) Maximum Overdrive (based on King's stories "The Mangler," "Trucks," and "The Lawnmower Man"; released by Dino de Laurentiis's North Carolina Film Corp., 1986), New American Library (New York, NY), 1986.

Pet Sematary (based on King's novel of the same title), Laurel Production, 1989.

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers, Columbia, 1992.

(Author of introduction) Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script, Newmarket Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Storm of the Century (also see below), Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(Author of introductions with William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan) William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan, Dreamcatcher: The Shooting Script, Newmarket Press (New York, NY), 2003.

TELEPLAYS

Stephen King's Golden Years, CBS-TV, 1991.

(And executive producer) Stephen King's The Stand (based on King's novel The Stand), ABC-TV, 1994.

(With Chris Carter) Chinga, (episode of The X-Files,) Fox-TV, 1998.

Storm of the Century, ABC-TV, 1999.

Rose Red (also see below), ABC-TV, 2001.

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, ABC-TV, 2004.

Desperation, USA, c. 2004.

Also author of Battleground (based on short story of same title; optioned by Martin Poll Productions for NBC-TV), and "Sorry, Right Number," for television series Tales from the Dark Side, 1987.

RECORDINGS

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, New American Library (New York, NY), 1988.

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, New American Library (New York, NY), 1989.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, Penguin-HighBridge Audio (St. Paul, MN), 1991.

Needful Things, Penguin-HighBridge Audio (St. Paul, MN), 1991.

OMNIBUS EDITIONS

Stephen King (contains The Shining, Salem's Lot, Night Shift, and Carrie), W. S. Heinemann/Octopus Books (London, England), 1981.

(And author of introduction) The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels (contains Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man), New American Library (New York, NY), 1985.

Another Quarter Mile: Poetry, Dorrance (Philadelphia, PA), 1979.

Stephen King's Danse Macabre (nonfiction), Everest House (New York, NY), 1981.

The Plant (privately published episodes of a comic horror novel in progress), Philtrum Press (Bangor, ME), Part 1, 1982, Part 2, 1983, Part 3, 1985.

Black Magic and Music: A Novelist's Perspective on Bangor (pamphlet), Bangor Historical Society (Bangor, ME), 1983.

Dolan's Cadillac, Lord John Press (Northridge, CA), 1989.

Stephen King (contains Desperation and The Regulators) Signet (New York, NY), 1997.

Stephen King's Latest (contains Dolores Claiborne, Insomnia and Rose Madder) Signet (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques (nonfiction), photographs by F. Stop FitzGerald, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Scribner (New York, NY), 2000.

Author of e-book The Plant, self-published first two chapters on his Web site (www.stephenking.com), August, 2000; also published a short story, "Riding the Bullet," as an e-book, March, 2000. Author of weekly column "King's Garbage Truck" for Maine Campus, 1969-70, and of monthly book review column for Adelina, 1980. Contributor of short fiction and poetry to numerous magazines, including Art, Castle Rock: The Stephen King Newsletter, Cavalier, Comics Review, Cosmopolitan, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Gallery, Great Stories from Twilight Zone Magazine, Heavy Metal, Ladies' Home Journal, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Maine, Maine Review, Marshroots, Marvel comics, Moth, Omni, Onan, Playboy, Redbook, Reflections, Rolling Stone, Science-Fiction Digest, Startling Mystery Stories, Terrors, Twilight Zone Magazine, Ubris, Whisper, and Yankee. Contributor of book reviews to the New York Times Book Review.

Most of King's papers are housed in the special collection of the Folger Library at the University of Maine at Orono.

ADAPTATIONS: Many of King's novels have been adapted for the screen. Carrie was produced as a motion picture in 1976 by Paul Monash for United Artists, screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen, directed by Brian De Palma, featuring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, and was also produced as a Broadway musical in 1988 by Cohen and Michael Gore, developed in England by the Royal Shakespeare Company, featuring Betty Buckley; Salem's Lot was produced as a television miniseries in 1979 by Warner Brothers, teleplay by Paul Monash, featuring David Soul and James Mason, and was adapted for the cable channel TNT in 2004, with a teleplay by Peter Filardi and direction by Mikael Salomon; The Shining was filmed in 1980 by Warner Brothers/Hawks Films, screenplay by director Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, and it was filmed for television in 1997 by Warner Brothers, directed by Mick Garris, starring Rebecca De Mornay, Steven Weber, Courtland Mead, and Melvin Van Peebles; Cujo was filmed in 1983 by Warner Communications/Taft Entertainment, screenplay by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier, featuring Dee Wallace and Danny Pintauro; The Dead Zone was filmed in 1983 by Paramount Pictures, screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, starring Christopher Walken; was adapted as a cable television series starring Anthony Michael Hall by USA Network, beginning 2002; Christine was filmed in 1983 by Columbia Pictures, screenplay by Bill Phillips; Firestarter was produced in 1984 by Frank Capra, Jr., for Universal Pictures in association with Dino de Laurentiis, screenplay by Stanley Mann, featuring David Keith and Drew Barrymore; Stand by Me (based on King's novella The Body) was filmed in 1986 by Columbia Pictures, screenplay by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, directed by Rob Reiner; The Running Man was filmed in 1987 by Taft Entertainment/Barish Productions, screenplay by Steven E. de Souza, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; Misery was produced in 1990 by Columbia, directed by Reiner, screenplay by William Goldman, starring James Caan and Kathy Bates; Graveyard Shift was filmed in 1990 by Paramount, directed by Ralph S. Singleton, adapted by John Esposito; Stephen King's It (based on King's novel It) was filmed as a television miniseries by ABC-TV in 1990; The Dark Half was filmed in 1993 by Orion, written and directed by George A. Romero, featuring Timothy Hutton and Amy Madigan; Needful Things was filmed in 1993 by Columbia/Castle Rock, adapted by W. D. Richter and Lawrence Cohen, directed by Fraser C. Heston, starring Max Von Sydow, Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia, and Amanda Plummer; The Tommy-knockers was filmed as a television miniseries by ABC-TV in 1993; The Shawshank Redemption, based on King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal, was filmed in 1994 by Columbia, written and directed by Frank Darabont, featuring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman; Dolores Claiborne was filmed in 1995 by Columbia; Thinner was filmed by Paramount in 1996, directed by Dom Holland, starring Robert John Burke, Joe Mantegna, Lucinda Jenney, and Michael Constantine; Night Flier was filmed by New Amsterdam Entertainment/Stardust International/Medusa Film in 1997, directed by Mark Pavia, starring Miguel Ferrer, Julie Entwisle, Dan Monahan, and Michael H. Moss; Apt Pupil was filmed in 1998 by TriStar Pictures, directed by Bryan Singer, starring David Schwimmer, Ian McKellen, and Brad Renfro; The Green Mile was filmed in 1999 by Castle Rock, directed by Frank Darabont, who also wrote the screenplay, starring Tom Hanks; Hearts in Atlantis was filmed in 2001 by Castle Rock, directed by Scott Hicks, screenplay written by William Goldman, starring Anthony Hopkins; Dream-catcher was released in 2003 by Warner Brothers and Castle Rock Entertainment and was directed by Lawrence Kasdan, written by William Goldman, starring Morgan Freeman. Several of King's short stories have also been adapted for the screen, including The Boogeyman, filmed by Tantalus in 1982 and 1984 in association with the New York University School of Undergraduate Film, screenplay by producer-director Jeffrey C. Schiro; The Woman in the Room, filmed in 1983 by Darkwoods, screenplay by director Frank Darabont, broadcast on public television in Los Angeles, 1985 (released with The Boogeyman on videocassette as Two Mini-Features from Stephen King's Nightshift Collection by Granite Entertainment Group, 1985); Children of the Corn, produced in 1984 by Donald P. Borchers and Terrence Kirby for New World Pictures, screenplay by George Goldsmith; The Word Processor (based on King's "The Word Processor of the Gods"), produced by Romero and Richard Rubenstein for Laurel Productions, 1984, teleplay by Michael Dowell, broadcast November 19, 1985, on Tales from the Darkside series and released on videocassette by Laurel Entertainment, 1985; Gramma, filmed by CBS-TV in 1985, teleplay by Harlan Ellison, broadcast February 14, 1986, on The Twilight Zone series; Creepshow 2 (based on "The Raft" and two unpublished stories by King, "Old Chief Wood'nhead" and "The Hitchhiker"), was filmed in 1987 by New World Pictures, screenplay by Romero; Sometimes They Come Back, filmed by CBS-TV in 1987; "The Cat from Hell" is included in a three-segment anthology film titled Tales from the Darkside—The Movie, produced by Laurel Productions, 1990; The Lawnmower Man, written by director Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett for New Line Cinema, 1992; The Mangler, filmed by New Line Cinema, 1995; and The Langoliers, filmed as a television miniseries by ABC-TV in 1995; the short fiction "Secret Window, Secret Garden" was adapted into the film Secret Window, distributed by Columbia Pictures, written and directed by David Koepp; 2004; the short story "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" from the collection Everything's Eventual has been adapted and made into a short film by James Renner; film rights to the short story "1408" from the collection Everything's Eventual has been optioned by Dimension Films.

WORK IN PROGRESS: In collaboration with Stewart O'Nan, a nonfiction work chronicling the 2004 season of the Boston Red Sox.

SIDELIGHTS: "With Stephen King," mused Chelsea Quinn Yarbro in Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King,"you never have to ask 'Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?'—You are. And he knows it." Throughout a prolific array of novels, short stories, and screen work in which elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and humor meld, King deftly arouses fear from dormancy. The breadth and durability of his popularity alone evince his mastery as a compelling storyteller. "Nothing is as unstoppable as one of King's furies, except perhaps King's word processor," remarked Gil Schwartz in People, which selected King as one of twenty individuals who had defined the decade of the Eighties. And although the critical reception of his work has not necessarily matched its sweeping success with readers, colleagues and several critics alike discern within it a substantial and enduring literary legitimacy. In American Film, for instance, Darrell Ewing and Dennis Meyers called him "the chronicler of contemporary America's dreams, desires, and fears."

While striking a deep and responsive chord within its readers, the genre of horror is frequently trivialized by critics who tend to regard it, when at all, less seriously than mainstream fiction. In an interview with Charles Platt in Dream Makers: The Uncommon Men and Women Who Write Science Fiction, King suspected that "most of the critics who review popular fiction have no understanding of it as a whole." Regarding the "propensity of a small but influential element of the literary establishment to ghettoize horror and fantasy and instantly relegate them beyond the pale of so-called serious literature," King told Eric Norden in a Playboy interview, "I'm sure those critics' nineteenth-century precursors would have contemptuously dismissed [Edgar Allan] Poe as the great American hack." But as King contends in "The Horror Writer and the Ten Bears," his foreword to Kingdom of Fear: "Horror isn't a hack market now, and never was. The genre is one of the most delicate known to man, and it must be handled with great care and more than a little love." Furthermore, in a panel discussion at the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, reprinted in Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King, he predicted that horror writers "might actually have a serious place in American literature in a hundred years or so."

King's ability to comprehend "the attraction of fantastic horror to the denizen of the late twentieth century," according to Deborah L. Notkin in FearItself, partially accounts for his unrivaled popularity in the genre. But what distinguishes him is the way in which he transforms the ordinary into the horrific. Pointing out in the Atlantic Monthly that horror frequently represents "the symbolic depiction of our common experience," Lloyd Rose observed that "King takes ordinary emotional situations—marital stress, infidelity, peer-group-acceptance worries—and translates them into violent tales of vampires and ghosts. He writes supernatural soap operas." But to Gary Williams Crawford in Discovering Stephen King, King is "a uniquely sensitive author" within the Gothic literary tradition, which he described as "essentially a literature of nightmare, a conflict between waking life and the darkness within the human mind." Perpetuating the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft, "King is heir to the American Gothic tradition in that he has placed his horrors in contemporary settings and has depicted the struggle of an American culture to face the horrors within it," explained Crawford, and because "he has shown the nightmare of our idealistic civilization." Observing that children suspend their disbelief easily, King argued in his Danse Macabre that, ironically, they are actually "better able to deal with fantasy and terror on its own terms than their elders are." In an interview for High Times, for instance, he marveled at the resilience of a child's mind and the inexplicable, yet seemingly harmless, attraction of children to nightmare-inducing stories: "We start kids off on things like 'Hansel and Gretel,' which features child abandonment, kidnapping, attempted murder, forcible detention, cannibalism, and finally murder by cremation. And the kids love it." Adults are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, but in the process of growing up, laments King in Danse Macabre, they develop "a good case of mental tunnel vision and a gradual ossification of the imaginative faculty"; thus, he perceives the task of the fantasy or horror writer as enabling one to become "for a little while, a child again." In Time King discussed the prolonged obsession with childhood that his generation has had. "We went on playing for a long time, almost feverishly," he recalled. "I write for that buried child in us, but I'm writing for the grown-up too. I want grown-ups to look at the child long enough to be able to give him up."

The empowerment of estranged young people is a theme that recurs throughout King's fiction. "If Stephen King's kids have one thing in common," declared young-adult novelist Robert Cormier in the Washington Post Book World, "it's the fact that they all are losers. In a way, all children are losers, of course—how can they be winners with that terrifying adult world stacked against them?" His first novel, Carrie, is about a persecuted teenaged girl. "The novel examines female power," stated Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Carol Senf, "for Carrie gains her telekinetic abilities with her first menstruation." "It is," Senf concluded, "a compelling character study of a persecuted teenager who finally uses her powers to turn the table on her persecutors. The result is a violent explosion that destroys the mother who had taught her self-hatred and the high-school peers who had made her a scapegoat." An alienated teenaged boy is the main character in King's Christine, and Rage features Charlie Decker, a young man who tells the story of his descent into madness and murder. In The Shining and Firestarter, Danny Torrance and Charlie McGee are alienated not from their families—they have loving, if sometimes weak, parents—but through the powers they possess and by those who want to manipulate them: evil supernatural forces in The Shining, the U.S. Government in Firestarter. Children also figure prominently, although not always as victims, in Salem's Lot, The Tommyknockers, Pet Sematary, The Eyes of the Dragon, and The Talisman.

King's most explicit examination of alienation in childhood, however, comes in the novel It. The eponymous IT is a creature that feeds on children—on their bodies and on their emotions, especially fear. IT lives in the sewers of Derry, Maine, having arrived there ages ago from outer space, and emerges about every twenty-seven years in search of victims. "It begins, demonically enough, in 1957," explained New York Review of Books contributor Thomas R. Edwards, "when a six-year-old boy has his arm torn off by what appears to be a circus clown lurking down a storm drain. . . . King organizes the tale as two parallel stories, one tracing the activities of seven unprepossessing fifth-graders—'The Losers' Club'—who discovered and fought the horror in 1958, the other describing their return to Derry in 1985 when the cycle resumes." The surviving members of the Losers' Club return to Derry to confront IT and defeat IT once and for all. The only things that appears to hurt IT are faith, humor, and childlike courage. "Only brave and imaginative children, or adults who learn to remember and honor their childish selves," Edwards concluded, "can hope to foil It, as the Losers finally do in 1985."

"It involves the guilts and innocences of childhood and the difficulty for adults of recapturing them," Christopher Lehmann-Haupt stated in the New York Times. "It questions the difference between necessity and free will. It also concerns the evil that has haunted America from time to time in the forms of crime, racial and religious bigotry, economic hardship, labor strife and industrial pollution." The evil takes shape among Derry's adults and older children, especially the bullies who terrorize the members of the Losers' Club.

Not surprisingly, throughout most of King's adolescence, the written word afforded a powerful diversion. "Writing has always been it for me," King indicated in a panel discussion at the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, reprinted in Bare Bones. Science fiction and adventure stories comprised his first literary efforts. Having written his first story at the age of seven, King began submitting short fiction to magazines at twelve, and published his first story at eighteen. In high school, he authored a small, satiric newspaper titled "The Village Vomit"; and in college he penned a popular and eclectic series of columns called "King's Garbage Truck." He also started writing the novels he eventually published under the pseudonymous ruse of Richard Bachman—novels that focus more on elements of human alienation and brutality than supernatural horror. After graduation, King supplemented his teaching salary through various odd jobs and by submitting stories to men's magazines. Searching for a form of his own, and responding to a friend's challenge to break out of the machismo mold of his short fiction, King wrote what he described to Abe Peck in Rolling Stone College Papers as "a parable of women's consciousness." Retrieving the discarded manuscript from the trash, though, King's wife, Tabitha, who is a writer herself, suggested that he ought to expand it. And because King completed the first draft of Carrie at the time William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist and Thomas Tryon's The Other were being published, the novel was marketed as horror fiction, and the genre had found its juggernaut. Or, as Don Herron put it in Fear Itself, "Like a mountain, King is there."

"Stephen King has made a dent in the national consciousness in a way no other horror writer has, at least during his own lifetime," stated Alan Warren in Discovering Stephen King. "He is a genuine phenomenon." A newsletter—"Castle Rock"—has been published since 1985 to keep his ever-increasing number of fans well informed; and Book-of-the-Month Club has been reissuing all of his best-sellers as the Stephen King Library collection. In his preface to Fear Itself, "On Becoming a Brand Name," King described the process as a fissional one in that a "writer produces a series of books which ricochet back and forth between hardcover and softcover at an ever increasing speed." Resorting to a pseudonym to get even more work into print accelerated the process for King; but according to Stephen P. Brown in Kingdom of Fear, although the ploy was not entirely "a vehicle for King to move his earliest work out of the trunk," it certainly triggered myriad speculations about, as well as hunts for, other possible pseudonyms he may also have used. In his essay "Why I Was Bachman" in The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King, King recalled that he simply considered it a good idea at the time, especially since he wanted to try to publish something without the attendant commotion that a Stephen King title would have unavoidably generated. Also, his publisher believed that he had already saturated the market. King's prodigious literary output and multimillion-dollar contracts, though, have generated critical challenges to the inherent worth of his fiction. Deducing that he has been somehow compromised by commercial success, some critics imply that he writes simply to fulfill contractual obligations. But as King told Norden, "Money really has nothing to do with it one way or the other. I love writing the things I write, and I wouldn't and 'couldn't' do anything else."

King writes daily, exempting only Christmas, the Fourth of July, and his birthday. He likes to work on two things simultaneously, beginning his day early with a two- or three-mile walk: "What I'm working on in the morning is what I'm working on," he said in a panel discussion at the 1980 World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, reprinted in Bare Bones. He devotes his afternoon hours to rewriting. And according to his Playboy interview, while he is not particular about working conditions, he is about his output. Despite chronic headaches, occasional insomnia, and even a fear of writer's block, he produces six pages daily; "And that's like engraved in stone," he told Joyce Lynch Dewes Moore in Mystery.

Aware that "people want to be scared," as he related to Abe Peck in a Rolling Stone College Papers interview, and truly delighted to be able to accommodate them, King rejects the criticism that he preys on the fears of others. As he explained to Jack Matthews in a Detroit Free Press interview, some people simply avoid his books just as those who are afraid of speed and heights, especially in tandem, shun roller coasters. And that, he declared to Paul Janeczko in English Journal, is precisely what he believes he owes his readers—"a good ride on the roller coaster." Regarding what he finds to be an essential reassurance that underlies and impels the genre itself, King remarked in Danse Macabre that "beneath its fangs and fright wig" horror fiction is really quite conservative. Comparing horror fiction with the morality plays of the late middle ages, for instance, he believes that its primary function is "to reaffirm the virtues of the norm by showing us what awful things happen to people who venture into taboo lands." Also, there is the solace in knowing "when the lights go down in the theatre or when we open the book that the evildoers will almost certainly be punished, and measure will be returned for measure." But King admitted to Norden that despite all the discussion by writers generally about "horror's providing a socially and psychologically useful catharsis for people's fears and aggressions, the brutal fact of the matter is that we're still in the business of public executions."

"Death is a significant element in nearly all horror fiction," wrote Michael A. Morrison in Fantasy Review, "and it permeates King's novels and short stories." Noting in Danse Macabre that a universal fear with which each of us must personally struggle is "the fear of dying," King explained to Bob Spitz in a Penthouse magazine interview that "everybody goes out to horror movies, reads horror novels—and it's almost as though we're trying to preview the end." But he submitted that "if the horror story is our rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination—just one more pipeline to the infinite." While he believes that horror is "one of the ways we walk our imagination," as he told Matthews, he does worry about the prospect of a mentally unstable reader patterning behavior after some fictional brutality. Remarking that "evil is basically stupid and unimaginative and doesn't need creative inspiration from me or anybody else," King told Norden, for instance, that "despite knowing all that rationally, I have to admit that it is unsettling to feel that I could be linked in any way, however tenuous, to somebody else's murder."

An example of King's ability to "pour new wine from old bottles" is his experimentation with narrative structure. In It, Carrie, and The Stand, declared Tony Magistrale in the study Landscape of Fear: Stephen King's American Gothic, King explores story forms—"stream of consciousness, interior monologues, multiple narrators, and a juggling of time sequences—in order to draw the reader into a direct and thorough involvement with the characters and events of the tale." Both The Dark Half and Misery, according to George Stade in the New York Times Book Review, are "parable[s] in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience." In Gerald's Game's Jessie Burlingame has lost her husband to heart failure. He "has died after handcuffing her to the bed at their summer home," Senf explained in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "and Jessie must face her life, including the memory that her father had sexually abused her, and her fears alone." Dolores Claiborne is the story of a woman suspected of murdering her employer, a crusty old miser named Vera Donovan. Dolores maintains her innocence, but she freely confesses that she murdered her husband thirty years previously when she caught him molesting their daughter.

"There are a series of dovetailing, but unobtrusive, connections," stated Locus contributor Edward Bryant, "linking the two novels and both Jessie and Dolores." Like It, both Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne are set in the town of Derry, Maine. They are also both psychological portraits of older women who have been subjected to sexual abuse. Dolores Claiborne differs from Gerald's Game, however, because it uses fewer of the traditional trappings of horror fiction, and it is related entirely from the viewpoint of the title character. Dolores Claiborne "is, essentially, a dramatic monologue," stated Kit Reed in the Washington Post Book World, "in which the speaker addresses other people in the room, answers questions and completes a narrative in actual time." "All but the last page is one long quote from Dolores Claiborne," asserted a Rapport reviewer. "King has taken horror literature out of the closet and has injected new life into familiar genres," Senf concluded. "He is not afraid to mix those genres in fresh ways to produce novels that examine contemporary American culture."

Insomnia, King's 1994 novel, continues the example set by Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne. It is also set in Derry, and its protagonist is an elderly man named Ralph Roberts, a retired salesman, newly widowed and suffering severely from insomnia. Ralph begins to see people in a new way: their auras become visible to him. "Ralph finds himself a man in a classic situation, a mortal in conflict with the fates—literally," declared Locus reviewer Bryant. "How much self-determination does he really possess? And how much is he acted upon?" Ralph also finds himself in conflict with his neighbor Ed Deepeneau, a conservative Christian and antiabortion activist who beats his wife and has taken up a crusade against a visiting feminist speaker. "There are some truly haunting scenes in the book about wife abuse and fanaticism, as well as touching observations about growing old, but they're quickly consumed by more predictable sensationalism," remarked Chris Bohjalian in the New York Times Book Review. "In a world teeming with timeless, omnipotent entities," declared novelist Kinky Friedman in the Washington Post Book World, "King has provided Ralph Roberts, that ancient vulnerable, white-haired widower, with the ultimate weapon, the power of the human spirit."

King delighted his readers and astounded his critics by issuing three new major novels in 1996: Desperation, The Regulators—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman—and The Green Mile, the last a Depression-era prison novel serialized in six installments. A Publishers Weekly reviewer said that "if the publishing industry named a Person of the Year, this year's winner would be Stephen King." The critic noted that, with Desperation, "King again proves himself the premier literary barometer of our cultural clime." Released on the same day from two different publishers, Desperation and The Regulators have interlocking characters and plots; each works as a kind of distorted mirror image of the other. In Desperation, which many critics agree is the better book, a group of strangers drive into Desperation, Nevada, where they encounter a malign spirit (Tak) in the body of police officer Collie Entragian. The survivors of this apocalyptic novel are few, but include David Carver, an eleven-year-old boy who talks to God, and John Edward Marinville, an alcoholic novelist. Robert Polito, writing for the New York Times, noted that "King's peculiar knack as a novelist is to strip away much of the complexity and nearly all of the art from a terrifying vision of an unknowable universe ruled by a limited, perhaps evil God and insinuate that Gnosticism into the rituals and commodities of everyday America." Polito admired King's capacity to tap into the collective unconscious of America at the end of the millennium but regretted that "the recurrent silliness shrugs off the horror and the social anger." Mark Harris, writing for Entertainment Weekly, however, remarked that King "hasn't been this intent on scaring readers—or been this successful at it—since The Stand," noting that "King has always been pop fiction's most compassionate sadist." In Desperation, King grapples with the nature of God, but Polito claimed that the "bromide" that "God is Love" can't dispel the novel's dark and cruel vision of the universe. King recorded the audio version of Desperation himself.

While The Regulators received little critical praise, King's experiment in serialization with The Green Mile captured the imagination of both readers and critics. An Entertainment Weekly reviewer called it a novel "that's as hauntingly touching as it is just plain haunted," and a New York Times contributor claimed that in spite of "the striking circumstances of its serial publication," the novel "manages to sustain the notes of visceral wonder and indelible horror that keep eluding the Tak books." Set in the Deep South in 1932, The Green Mile—a prison expression for death row—begins with the death of twin girls and the conviction of John Coffey for their murder. Block superintendent Paul Edgecombe, who narrates the story years later from his nursing home in Georgia, slowly unfolds the story of the mysterious Coffey, a man with no past and with a gift for healing.

King's next major novel, Bag of Bones, appeared in 1998. This tale of a writer struggling with both grief for his dead wife and writer's block while living in a haunted cabin met with a great deal of acclaim from critics. Also acclaimed was the following year's Hearts in Atlantis, which Tom De Haven described in Entertainment Weekly as "a novel in five stories, with players sometimes migrating from one story to the next." De Haven went on to note that "there's more heartbreak than horror in these pages, and a doomy aura that's more generational than occult." He also reported that the "last two stories are drenched in sadness, mortality, regret, and finally absolution," concluding that Hearts in Atlantis "is wonderful fiction." Similarly, Ray Olson praised the volume in Booklist as "a rich, engaging, deeply moving generational epic." The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon also saw print in 1999. This novel, short by King's standards, centers on a nine-year-old girl from a broken home who gets lost in a forest for two weeks. She has her radio with her, and survives her ordeal by listening to Boston Red Sox games and imagining conversations with her hero, Red Sox relief pitcher Tom Gordon.

While these books were making their way to readers, however, King suffered a serious health challenge. On June 19, 1999, he was struck by a van while walking alongside a road near his home, sustaining injuries to his spine, hip, ribs, and right leg. One of his broken ribs punctured a lung, and he nearly died. He began a slow progress towards recovery, cheered by countless cards and letters from his fans. During his recovery, he began experimenting with publishing his fiction electronically. In August, 2000, King self-published the first two installments of his e-book The Plant on his Web site. Pricing the installments at one dollar each, King promised to publish additional chapters if at least 75 percent of those who download the first two installments paid for them. King also published a short story, "Riding the Bullet," in March, only distributed as an e-book publication in a number of formats. This tale was eventually reprinted in the 2002 collection Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales.

King had also begun work on a writer's manual before his accident, and the result, 2000's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, sold more copies in its first printing than any previous book about writing. In addition to King's advice on crafting fiction, however, the book includes a great deal of autobiographical material. The author chronicles his childhood, his rise to fame, his struggles with addiction, and the horrific accident that almost ended his life. "King's writing about his own alcoholism and cocaine abuse," noted John Mark Eberhart in the Kansas City Star, "is among the best and most honest prose of his career." Similarly, Jack Harville reported in the Charlotte Observer that "the closing piece describes King's accident and rehabilitation. The description is harrowing, and the rehab involves both physical and emotional recovery. It is beautifully told in a narrative style that would have gained Strunk and White's approval." Some of the novels King has published since the beginning of the twenty-first century, including Dreamcatcher and From a Buick 8, have brought strong comparisons from critics with his earlier novels; in these specific cases, It and Christine, respectively. These books, however, were followed by an announcement King made in 2002 that he is planning to retire from publishing. In an interview with Chris Nashawaty in Entertainment Weekly, King clarified, "First of all, I'd never stop writing because I don't know what I'd do between nine and one every day. But I'd stop publishing. I don't need the money." Yet Dreamcatcher and From a Buick 8 have garnered praise from reviewers as well. Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald maintained that "Dreamcatcher marks [King's] bracing return to all-out horror, complete with trademark grisly gross-outs, a panoramic cast of deftly drawn characters and a climactic race against time, with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance." Salem Macknee in the Charlotte Observer, noting surface similarities between From a Buick 8 and Christine, assured readers that "this strange counterfeit of a Buick Roadmaster is no rerun. Stephen King has once again created an original, a monster never seen before, with its own frightful fingerprint."

King also received a great deal of praise for Everything's Eventual. Among other stories, the collection includes a few that he previously published in the New Yorker. Notable among these is "The Man in the Black Suit," which won the 1996 O. Henry Award for best short story and brought King comparisons with great nineteenth-century American fiction writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. "As a whole," concluded Rodriguez in another Miami Herald review, "Everything's Eventual makes a perfect showcase for all of King's strengths: His uncanny talent for creating vivid, fully realized characters in a few strokes, his ability to mine horror out of the mundane, . . . and his knack for leavening even the most preposterous contraptions with genuine, universal emotions."

Although he does not necessarily feel that he has been treated unfairly by the critics, King has described what it is like to witness the written word turned into filmed images that are less than generously received by reviewers. "Whenever I publish a book, I feel like a trapper caught by the Iroquois," he told Peck in Rolling Stone College Papers. "They're all lined up with tomahawks, and the idea is to run through with your head down, and everybody gets to take a swing. . . . Finally, you get out the other side and you're bleeding and bruised, and then it gets turned into a movie, and you're there in front of the same line and everybody's got their tomahawks out again." Nevertheless, in his essay "Why I Was Bachman," he readily admitted that he really has little to complain about: "I'm still married to the same woman, my kids are healthy and bright, and I'm being well paid for doing something I love." And despite the financial security and recognition, or perhaps because of its intrinsic responsibility, King strives to improve at his craft. "It's getting later and I want to get better, because you only get so many chances to do good work," he stated in a panel discussion at the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa. "There's no justification not to at least try to do good work when you make the money."

According to Warren in Discovering Stephen King, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that success has been detrimental to King: "As a novelist, King has been remarkably consistent." Noting, for instance, that "for generations it was given that brevity was the soul of horror, that the ideal format for the tale of terror was the short story," Warren pointed out that "King was among the first to challenge that concept, writing not just successful novels of horror, but long novels." Moreover, said Warren, "his novels have gotten longer." King once quipped in the Chicago Tribune Magazine that his "philosophy has always been take a good thing and beat it 'til it don't move no more." Although some critics fault him for overwriting, Warren suggested that "the sheer scope and ambitious nature of his storytelling demands a broad canvas." Referring to this as "the very pushiness of his technique," the New York Times' Lehmann-Haupt similarly contended that "the more he exasperates us by overpreparing, the more effectively his preparations eventually pay off."

Influenced by the naturalistic novels of writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris, King confessed to Janeczko that his personal outlook for the world's future is somewhat bleak. On the other hand, one of the things he finds most comforting in his own work is an element of optimism. "In almost all cases, I've begun with a premise that was really black," he said in a panel discussion at the 1980 World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, reprinted in Bare Bones. "And a more pleasant resolution has forced itself upon that structure." But as Andrew M. Greeley maintained in Kingdom of Fear: "Unlike some other horror writers who lack his talents and sensitivity, Stephen King never ends his stories with any cheap or easy hope. People are badly hurt, they suffer and some of them die, but others survive the struggle and manage to grow. The powers of evil have not yet done them in." According to Notkin, though, the reassurance King brings to his own readers derives from a basic esteem for humanity itself: "For whether he is writing about vampires, about the death of 99 percent of the population, or about innocent little girls with the power to break the earth in half, King never stops emphasizing his essential liking for people."

"There's unmistakable genius in Stephen King," admitted Walter Kendrick in the Village Voice, adding that he writes "with such fierce conviction, such blind and brutal power, that no matter how hard you fight—and needless to say, I fought—he's irresistible." The less reserved critical affirmations of King's work extend from expressions of pragmatism to those of metaphor. Lehmann-Haupt, for example, a self-professed King addict, offered his evaluation of King's potential versus his accomplishments as a writer of horror fiction: "Once again, as I edged myself nervously toward the climax of one of his thrillers, I found myself considering what Stephen King could accomplish if he would only put his storytelling talents to serious use. And then I had to ask myself: if Mr. King's aim in writing . . . was not entirely serious by some standard that I was vaguely invoking, then why, somebody please tell me, was I holding on to his book so hard that my knuckles had begun to turn white?" Douglas E. Winter assessed King's contribution to the genre in his study Stephen King: The Art of Darkness this way: "Death, destruction, and destiny await us all at the end of the journey—in life as in horror fiction. And the writer of horror stories serves as the boatman who ferries people across that Reach known as the River Styx. . . . In the horror fiction of Stephen King, we can embark upon the night journey, make the descent down the dark hole, cross that narrowing Reach, and return again in safety to the surface—to the near shore of the river of death. For our boatman has a master's hand."

While King has played with the idea of giving up publishing his writings, his legion of fans continues to be delighted that the idea has not yet become a reality. In 2004, under the pseudonym of Eleanor Druse, King published The Journals of Eleanor Druse: My Investigation of the Kingdom Hospital Incident. He has also continued with his "Dark Tower" series (the illustrated novels featuring Roland the gunslinger) with the publication of The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla in 2003. The book was published more than five years after the publication of the previous installment in the series, The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. King also completed the final two installments of the series in 2004, including The Dark Tower VI: The Songs of Susannah and The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. In a surprise for fans, King introduced himself as a character in the sixth installment, which a Publishers Weekly reviewer called a "gutsy move" and commented, that "way there's no denying the ingenuity with which King paints a candid picture of himself." As noted by Gregory Kirschling in Entertainment Weekly, King announced in 2004 that he was also working on a new novel. Kirschling quoted the author as saying, "I don't know how well it's going, but the nice thing about it is, having announced my retirement, I don't feel like I'm under any pressure."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Badley, Linda, Writing Horror and the Body: The Fiction of Stephen King, Clive Barker and Anne Rice, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

Beahm, George W., The Stephen King Story, revised and updated edition, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1992.

Beahm, George W., editor, The Stephen King Companion, Andrews & McMeel (Kansas City, MO), 1989.

Blue, Tyson, Observations from the Terminator: Thoughts on Stephen King and Other Modern Masters of Horror Fiction, Borgo Press (San Bernardino, CA), 1995.

Collings, Michael R., Stephen King As Richard Bachman, Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1985.

Collings, Michael R., The Works of Stephen King: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide, edited by Boden Clarke, Borgo Press (San Bernardino, CA), 1993.

Collings, Michael R., Scaring Us to Death: The Impact of Stephen King on Popular Culture, 2nd edition, Borgo Press (San Bernardino, CA), 1995.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 12, 1980, Volume 26, 1983, Volume 37, 1985, Volume 61, 1990.

Davis, Jonathan P., Stephen King's America, Bowling Green State University Popular Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1994.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 143: American Novelists since World War II, Third Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1980, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

Docherty, Brian, editor, American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Hoppenstand, Gary, and Ray B. Browne, editors, The Gothic World of Stephen King: Landscape of Nightmares, Bowling Green State University Popular Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1987.

Keyishian, Amy, and Marjorie Keyishian, Stephen King, Chelsea House (Philadelphia, PA), 1995.

King, Stephen, Stephen King's Danse Macabre (nonfiction), Everest House (New York, NY), 1981.

King, Stephen, The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels, New American Library (New York, NY), 1985.

Magistrale, Tony, editor, Landscape of Fear: Stephen King's American Gothic, Bowling Green State University Popular Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1988.

Magistrale, Tony, editor, A Casebook on "The Stand," Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1992.

Magistrale, Tony, editor, The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King's Horrorscape, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1992.

Magistrale, Tony, Stephen King: The Second Decade—"Danse Macabre" to "The Dark Half," Twayne (New York, NY), 1992.

Platt, Charles, Dream Makers: The Uncommon Men and Women Who Write Science Fiction, Berkley (New York, NY), 1983.

Russell, Sharon A., Stephen King: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

Saidman, Anne, Stephen King, Master of Horror, Lerner Publications (Minneapolis, MN), 1992.

Schweitzer, Darrell, editor, Discovering Stephen King, Starmont House (Mercer Island, WA), 1985.

Short Story Criticism, Volume 17, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, editors, Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King, Underwood-Miller, 1982.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, editors, Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King, Underwood-Miller, 1986.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, editors, Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1988.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, editors, Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1992.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, editors, Fear Itself: The Early Works of Stephen King, foreword by King, introduction by Peter Straub, afterword by George A. Romero, Underwood-Miller, 1993.

Winter, Douglas E., Stephen King: The Art of Darkness, New American Library (New York, NY), 1984.

PERIODICALS

American Film, June, 1986, article by Darrell Ewing and Dennis Meyers.

Atlantic Monthly, September, 1986.

Book, November-December, Chris Barsanti, review of The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, p. 75.

Booklist, July, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Hearts in Atlantis, p. 1893; May 1, 2004, Ray Olson, review of The Dark Tower V: Song of Susannah, p. 1483.

Boston Globe, October 10, 1980; April 15, 1990, p. A1; May 16, 1990, p. 73; July 15, 1990, p. 71; September 11, 1990, p. 61; October 31, 1990, p. 25; November 17, 1990, p. 12; December 5, 1990, p. 73; July 16, 1991, p. 56; September 28, 1991, p. 9; November 22, 1991, p. 1; August 21, 1992, p. 21; August 30, 1992, p. 14; May 8, 1993, p. 21; May 24, 1993, p. 43; October 16, 1994, p. 14; May 13, 1995, p. 21.

Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1990, p. 3; October 29, 1990, p. 5; November 16, 1990, p. 1; November 30, 1990, p. C29; June 29, 1992, p. 3; November 18, 1992, p. 3; November 7, 1993, p. 9; October 26, 1994, p. 1; May 14, 1995, p. 5.

Chicago Tribune Magazine, October 27, 1985.

Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 1990, p. 13.

Detroit Free Press, November 12, 1982, Jack Matthes, interview with author.

Detroit News, September 26, 1979.

English Journal, January, 1979; February, 1980; January, 1983; December, 1983; December, 1984.

Entertainment Weekly, October 14, 1994, pp. 52-53; June 16, 1995, p. 54; March 22, 1996, p. 63; April 26, 1996, p. 49; May 31, 1996, p. 53; June 28, 1996, p. 98; August 2, 1996, p. 53; September 6, 1996, p. 67; October 4, 1996, p. 54; October 18, 1996, p. 75; December 27, 1996, p. 28; February 7, 1997, p. 111; April 11, 1997, p. 17; April 25, 1997, p. 52; November 28, 1997, p. 41; September 17, 1999, Tom De Haven, "King of Hearts: He May Be the Master of Horror, but Stephen King Is Also Adept at Capturing Everyday America. In Hearts in Atlantis, His Take on the 60s, including the Effects of Vietnam, Is Scarily Accurate," p.72; September 27, 2002, Chris Nashawaty, "Stephen King Quits," p. 20; June 25, 2004, Gregory Kirschling, review of The Dark Tower V: Song of Susannah, p. 172.

Esquire, November, 1984.

Fantasy Review, January, 1984, Michael A. Morrison.

Film Journal, April 12, 1982.

High Times, January, 1981; June, 1981.

Library Journal, March 1, 2004, Kristen L. Smith, review of The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, p. 126; May 15, 2004, Nancy McNicol review of The Dark Tower V: Song of Susannah, p. 115.

Locus, September, 1992, pp. 21-22, 67; November, 1992, pp. 19, 21; February, 1994, p. 39; October, 1994, pp. 27, 29.

Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1978; December 10, 1978; August 26, 1979; September 28, 1980; May 10, 1981; September 6, 1981; May 8, 1983; November 20, 1983; November 18, 1984; August 25, 1985; March 9, 1990, p. F16; October 29, 1990, p. F9; November 18, 1990, p. F6; November 30, 1990, p. F1; July 16, 1991, p. F1; May 28, 1992, p. E7; April 16, 1995, p. 28; November 7, 1997, p. D4.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 29, 1982; July 15, 1990, p. 12; June 9, 1991, p. 6; April 23, 1995, p. 14.

Maclean's, August 11, 1986.

Miami Herald, March 21, 2001, Rene Rodriguez, review of Dreamcatcher; March 27, 2002, Rene Rodriguez, review of Everything's Eventual.

Midwest Quarterly, spring, 2004, Tom Hansen, "Diabolical Dreaming in Stephen King's 'The Man in the Black Suit,'" p. 290.

Mystery, March, 1981.

New Republic, February 21, 1981.

New Statesman, September 15, 1995, p. 33.

Newsweek, August 31, 1981; May 2, 1983.

New Yorker, January 15, 1979; September 30, 1996, p. 78.

New York Review of Books, October 19, 1995, p. 54.

New York Times, March 1, 1977; August 14, 1981; August 11, 1982; April 12, 1983; October 21, 1983; November 8, 1984; June 11, 1985; April 4, 1987; January 25, 1988; June 17, 1990, p. 13; October 27, 1990, p. A12; November 16, 1990, p. C38; December 2, 1990, p. 19; June 3, 1991, p. C14; July 14, 1991, p. 25; October 2, 1991, p. C23; June 29, 1992, p. C13; November 16, 1992, p. C15; March 15, 1993, p. D6; June 27, 1993, p. 23; September 17, 1993, p. B8; April 24, 1995, p. C12; May 12, 1995, p. D18; June 26, 1995, p. C16; November 11, 1995, p. 39; April 7, 1996, p. E2; August 5, 1996, p. D7; October 26, 1996, 15; April 25, 1997, p. D22; October 27, 1997, p. C1; November 5, 1997, p. E3; November 7, 1997, pp. A30, D10; February 6, 1998, p. B10.

New York Times Book Review, May 26, 1974; October 24, 1976; February 20, 1977; March 26, 1978; February 4, 1979; September 23, 1979; May 11, 1980; May 10, 1981; September 27, 1981; August 29, 1982; April 3, 1983; November 6, 1983; November 4, 1984; June 9, 1985; February 22, 1987; December 6, 1987; May 13, 1990, p. 3; September 2, 1990, p. 21; September 29, 1991, pp. 13-14; August 16, 1992, p. 3; December 27, 1992, p. 15; October 24, 1993, p. 22; October 30, 1994, p. 24; March 24, 1995, p. C14; July 2, 1995, p. 11; October 20, 1996, p. 16.

New York Times Magazine, May 11, 1980.

Observer (Charlotte, NC), October 4, 2000, Jack Harville, review of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; Salem Macknee, review of From a Buick 8.

Observer (London, England), October 1, 1995, p. 15.

Penthouse, April, 1982, Bob Spitz, interview with author.

People, March 7, 1977; December 29, 1980; January 5, 1981; May 18, 1981; January 28, 1985; fall, 1989; April 1, 1996, p. 38; October 7, 1996, p. 32; October 21, 1996, p. 16; April 28, 1997, p. 15; January 19, 1998, p. 45.

Playboy, June, 1983, interview with author.

Publishers Weekly, January 17, 1977; May 11, 1984; March 13, 1996, p. 26; April 1, 1996, p. 22; May 13, 1996, p. 26; June 24, 1996, p. 43; August 5, 1996, p. 292; August 26, 1996, p. 34; September 9, 1996, p. 27; October 7, 1996, p. 20; April 7, 1997, p. 52; July 14, 1997, p. 65; October 27, 1997, p. 21; November 10, 1997, p. 10; April 19, 2004, review of The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, p. 37.

Rapport, Volume 17, number 3, p. 20.

Rolling Stone College Papers, winter, 1980; winter, 1983.

Saturday Review, September, 1981; November, 1984.

Science Fiction Chronicle, December, 1995; June, 1997, p. 43.

Star (Kansas City, MO), October 4, 2000, John Mark Eberhart, review of On Writing.

Time, August 30, 1982; July 1, 1985; October 6, 1986; December 7, 1992, p. 81; September 2, 1996, p. 60.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL) June 8, 1980.

Village Voice, April 29, 1981; October 23, 1984; March 3, 1987.

Voice Literary Supplement, September, 1982; November, 1985.

Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1992, p. B2; October 5, 1992, p. B3; November 7, 1997, p. B8.

Washington Post, August 26, 1979; April 9, 1985; May 8, 1987; October 29, 1990, p. B8; July 16, 1991, p. B1; April 13, 1992, p. C7; May 21, 1993, p. 16; May 27, 1993, p. D9; May 14, 1995, p. G1.

Washington Post Book World, May 26, 1974; October 1, 1978; August 26, 1980; April 12, 1981; August 22, 1982; March 23, 1983; October 2, 1983; November 13, 1983; June 16, 1985; August 26, 1990, p. 9; September 29, 1991, p. 9; October 31, 1991, p. C7; July 19, 1992, p. 7; December 13, 1992, p. 5; October 10, 1993, p. 4; October 9, 1994, p. 4; March 6, 1995, p. D6.

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