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King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York City, Scribner,2000

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Born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, ME in Maine General Hospital. He was born to Edwin King and Ruth Pillsbury King.

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On April 7, 1949, King's father left after saying he was going out to buy cigarettes, leaving Stephen's mother to care for him and his brother. This left his mother in a financial strain. Donald, their father, was born in 1914 in Miami County, Indiana on March 11.

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Stephen and his older brother, David, published their own local newspaper called "Dave's Rag". They first published this on January 9th, 1959. The stories were made using a mimeo machine that David used to make copies of the paper. This paper was all about local events that David would mostly write, but Stephen would contribute often. While King was young, he was always often reading and writing.

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Stephen King graduated Lisbon High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He graduated on May 18, 1962, and had a full-ride scholarship for literature to the University of Maine

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King and his best friend Chris Chesley published a collection of 18 short stories called "People, Places, and Things--Volume I" on August 27, 1963. These stories consisted of made of characters and scenarios. King would do the majority of the writing, while Chesley would do the illustrations.

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King's first professional story was called "The Glass Floor" in the "Startling Mystery Stories" in 1967. This was his first story to sell well in his career.

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His daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born on January 1, 1970 before him and his wife, Tabitha King, were married. She later grew up to be a reverend in Plantation, Florida. She works for the Unitarian Universalist Church of River Grass.

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With the full-ride scholarship to the University of Maine, King attended the school for 5 years. There, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1970, and is officially qualified to teach at the high school level in Orona, Maine

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Stephen King met his wife, Tabitha Spruce, in the library at the University of Maine in Orono, ME. While he was browsing the aisles, he saw her and was "immediately in love". The two of them got married on January 2, 1971.

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August 20, 1971, King began teaching high school English at Hampden Academy which is a public high school in Hampden, Maine. During his time teaching, he wrote mainly in the evenings and on the weekends whenever he could. Stephen continued to produce short stories and work on his novels whenever he was able to or when he wasn't teaching.

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Stephen King's mother had passed away in April of 1974 due to Uterine cancer. After this loss, he began suffering and struggling with severe alcoholic addiction, and was even drunk while delivering his mother's eulogy at her funeral. He encountered several other issues while experiencing this addiction, like not remembering entire 600+ page novels that he had written. He had first discovered that this could be an addiction in his early twenties and worsened as he entered parenthood. He later realized it brought anger and violence within him that he hadn't known was there. King soon began to test out other substances such as drug use. It wasn't until his wife brought it to his attention that it was becoming more of a problem to begin sobriety.

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August 27, 1974, King published his first ever novel. This was the first major novel that was written and published by King, and was the first of many, many more. This book, "Carrie", was published by Doubleday & Co.

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After a brief visit to the Stanley Hotel in 1974 by King, he wrote and published the horror novel "The Shining". The characters and setting of the novel were based off of the experiences personally, like his alcoholism, and with the hotel. He later published a sequel, titled "Doctor Sleep", to the novel after a film about the first book came out.

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After traveling to Boulder, Colorado in 1978, King didn't publish any novels due to his distance from home. When he returned back to his home state of Maine, he published the novel "The Stand". His traveling experiences inspired him to write this story about post-apocalyptic life.

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"It" by Stephen King was written in 1981 but was published later in September of 1986. This horror novel was one of the best-selling novels in the United States. Since this publication of the novel, the story has been modified several times for Tv and films. There have been three different movies made relating to the story, including a two-part miniseries in 1990 and in 2017, a film and its sequel titled "Chapter Two".

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Stephen handling injuries after the accident

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In 1999, King was out walking near his home on June 19 when a distracted driver slammed into his enough to cause King to fly over the vehicle and into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. The injuries retained from this incident were severe enough to make King consider retirement, but later changed his mind.

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On April 9, 2003 King was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writer's Association for his contribution to the horror genre, considering most of King's books were horror.

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King began writing children's books after publishing several horror novels. His first children's book is called "Blockade Billy", and this was published on May 25, 2010.

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Two out of three of Stephen's children are novelists. In the picture there are five total successful novelists, and four of them have published books. On the far left is Joe Hill who has published 63 books. He was born in 1972 to Tabitha and Stephen in Hermon, Maine, and then grew up in Bangor. Next to him is his mother, Tabitha. Next is Kelly Braffet who is married to the man to her right in the photo, Owen King who has published 12 books. Owen was born in 1977, and is the youngest child, and he had also grown up in Bangor, Maine. Lastly, is their daughter, Naomi.

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On September 8th, 1981, the book Cujo was released to stores worldwide. This book is one of the few that King has very little memory of writing from being so intoxicated while writing it.

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In 2011, Stephen King spoke in a political rally in Sarasota, Florida. He aimed his words against Governor Rick Scott disagreeing with his way of running things in the town.

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In 2012, King made the suggestion that all rich Americans, including himself, should pay more taxes rather than the Americans that are less fortunate.

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In 2015, several efforts were made to encourage Stephen to run for the governor of Maine. After many disputes between King's disagreements over Governor LePage in Sarasota, many people back in his hometown were wanting King to be elected.

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King officially retired from his career as a writer in 2017. His two final novels were "Joyride" and "Doctor Sleep", and his continuous writing has been missed by many. King made is known that he had several directors inform him of films that are being planned on being made shortly before this retirement was officially, which sealed the deal on the decision to retire.