Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born September 21, 1947, and broke through in 1974 with Carrie, a high-school telekinesis nightmare that made him the face of modern horror. Different Seasons in 1982 proved he could write outside the genre - four novellas that became Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and other unlikely classics. The adaptations followed like a filmography: The Shining in 1980, Misery in 1990, The Green Mile in 1999, It in 2017, with The Long Walk due in 2025. He's published roughly 200 short stories, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, co-authored with Peter Straub and his sons Joe Hill and Owen King, and penned the craft memoir On Writing in 2000. He won the O. Henry Award in 1994 for "The Man in the Black Suit," the 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and the 2014 National Medal of Arts. Joyce Carol Oates called him "a brilliantly rooted, psychologically 'realistic' writer for whom the American scene has been a continuous source of inspiration."