Among the films adapted from King's fiction are Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), The Dead Zone and Christine (both 1983), Stand by Me (1986), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Green Mile (1999), The Mist (2007), and It (2017).

He has published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and has co-written works with other authors, notably his friend Peter Straub and sons Joe Hill and Owen King.

They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago, Illinois; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Stratford, Connecticut.

[49] The latter novel is narrated by the title character in an unbroken monolog; Mark Singer described it as "a morally riveting confession from the earthy mouth of a sixty-six-year-old Maine coastal-island native with a granite-hard life but not a grain of self-pity".

Several reviewers said that it showed King's maturation as a writer; Charles de Lint wrote "He hasn't forsaken the spookiness and scares that have made him a brand name, but he uses them more judiciously now...

During his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk at University of Massachusetts Lowell on December 7, 2012, King said that he was writing a crime novel about a retired policeman being taunted by a murderer, with the working title Mr.

[88] In the late 1970s, King began a series about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate universe that is a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and the American Wild West as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti Westerns.

[91] He produced an artist's book with designer Barbara Kruger, My Pretty Pony (1989), published in a limited edition of 250 by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

[111]King often starts with a "what-if" scenario, asking what would happen if an alcoholic writer was stranded with his family in a haunted hotel (The Shining), or if one could see the outcome of future events (The Dead Zone), or if one could travel in time to alter the course of history (11/22/63).

"[6] In his acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, King said:"Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter?

[120] Other influences include Ray Bradbury,[121] Joseph Payne Brennan,[122] James M. Cain,[123] Jack Finney,[124] Graham Greene,[15] Elmore Leonard,[125] John D. MacDonald,[126] Don Robertson[127] and Thomas Williams.

[130] King dedicated it to "the people who built my house": Shelley, Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Straub and Arthur Machen, "whose short novel The Great God Pan has haunted me all my life".

In A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffery Deaver wrote that "While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels.

"[28] Daniel Mendelsohn, reviewing Bag of Bones, wrote that "Stephen King is so widely accepted as America's master of paranormal terrors that you can forget his real genius is for the everyday...

This is a book about reanimation: the ghosts', of course, but also Mike's, his desire to re-embrace love and work after a long bereavement that King depicts with an eye for the kind of small but moving details that don't typically distinguish blockbuster horror novels.

"[56] Joyce Carol Oates praised King's sense of place: "His fiction is famously saturated with the atmosphere of Maine; much of his mostly vividly imagined work—Salem's Lot, Dolores Claiborne, the elegantly composed story 'The Reach', for instance—is a poetic evocation of that landscape, its history and its inhabitants.

[138] Peter Straub compared King favorably to Charles Dickens: "Both are novelists of vast popularity and enormous bibliographies, both are beloved writers with a pronounced taste for the morbid and grotesque, both display a deep interest in the underclass.

It began: "Because, as writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power" and concluded "Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response; For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.

[167] King testified in an August 2022 case brought by the U.S. Justice Department to block a $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster (two of the "Big Five" book publishers).

"[22] King has stated that he donates approximately $4 million per year "to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organisations that underwrite the arts".

[180] In 2002, King, Peter Straub, John Grisham and Pat Conroy organized the Wavedancer Benefit, a public reading to raise funds for the actor and audiobook reader Frank Muller, who had been injured in a motorcycle accident.

[182] In November 2011, the STK Foundation donated $70,000 in matched funding via his radio station to help pay the heating bills for families in need in his hometown of Bangor, Maine, during the winter.

[193] He played guitar for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a charity supergroup whose members included Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Barry, Scott Turow, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Greg Iles, Kathi Kamen Goldmark and other authors.

In J. Peder Zane's The Top Ten: Authors Pick Their Favorite Books, King chose The Golden Argosy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Satanic Verses, McTeague, Lord of the Flies, Bleak House, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Raj Quartet, Light in August and Blood Meridian.

When asked who his favorite novelist is, he said "Probably Don Robertson, author of Paradise Falls, The Ideal, Genuine Man and the marvelously titled Miss Margaret Ridpath and the Dismantling of the Universe.

Driver Bryan Edwin Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet (four meters) from the pavement of Route 5.

[204]: 206  Early reports at the time from Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker claimed King was hit from behind, and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.

"[147] In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult recorded an updated version of its 1974 song "Astronomy"; the single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.

[212] He voiced himself in The Simpsons episode "Insane Clown Poppy", where he appears with fellow authors Amy Tan, John Updike and Tom Wolfe at a book fair.

His new novel imagines a time portal in a Maine diner that lets an English teacher go back to 1958 in an effort to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and—rewardingly for readers—also allows King to reflect on questions of memory, fate and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America.