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Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, The Maine Campus. He graduated from the University in 1970 with a B.S. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971.

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King made his first short story sale to a mass-market men¹s magazine shortly after his graduation from the University. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men¹s magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. In the fall of 1971, King began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy in Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and work on novels.

In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. King wrote his next-published novel Salem's Lot, in 1973, and 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 King wrote The Shining. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, King finished writing The Stand. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton.

The Kings have three adult children. King put some of his college dramatic society experience to use when he played a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders, and Creepshow, a film he scripted. In 1985, King wrote and directed the movie Maximum Overdrive, and Creepshow II was released in 1987. Many of his works have been adapted for the screen, including Carrie, The Shining, Christine, Cujo, Pet Sematary (for which King wrote the screenplay and had a bit part as a minister), and Misery, as well as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. The popular movie Stand By Me was adapted from his novella The Body from the Different Seasons collection. In 1992, the film Sleepwalkers was produced from an original screenplay by King. In 2004, King¹s first TV series, Kingdom Hospital, will air on ABC.