Stephen King

Stephen King is an American author, born in 1947, who is widely called the King of Horror for a body of fiction that also reaches into suspense, crime, science fiction, fantasy and mystery. His first novel, Carrie, appeared in 1974 and made his name in horror, while the 1982 collection Different Seasons marked his first major step away from the genre. His stories have fed a long run of screen adaptations across cinema and television, among them The Shining, Stand by Me, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and It. He also published as Richard Bachman, co-wrote with Peter Straub and with his sons Joe Hill and Owen King, wrote nonfiction such as Danse Macabre and On Writing, and directed one film himself, Maximum Overdrive, in 1986. Within the Film and Media Atlas he matters as a writer whose books supplied material for generations of screen work.