Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

     Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 at the Maine General Hospital in Portland, Maine. His parents were Donald Edwin King and Ruth Pillsbury King. Stephen had an older brother, David, who had been adopted at birth two years earlier. Stephen King began his actual writing career in January of 1959 when David King and Stephen decided to publish their own local town newspaper named Dave's Rag. David bought a mimeograph and they created a paper that sold for five cents an issue.

     Stephen King attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, Maine in 1962. Collaborating with his best friend, Chris Chesley, in 1963 they published a collection of 18 short stories called People, Places, and Things-Volume I. King's stories included "Hotel at the End of the Road", "I've Got to Get Away!", "The Dimension Warp", "The Thing at the Bottom of the Well", "The Stranger", "I'm Falling", "The Cursed Expedition" , and "The Other Side of the Fog." A year later King's amateur press, Triad and Gaslight Books, published a two part book titled "The Star Invaders". Stephen King made his first actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in length.

      In 1966, Stephen King graduated from high school and took a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom."

      Later that summer King began working on a novel called Getting It On, about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward off the National Guard. During his first year at college, King completed his first full length novel, The Long Walk. He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf/Random House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection badly and filed the book away. He made his first small sale with his story "The Glass Floor" for the amount of thirty-five dollars. In June 1970, Stephen King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and a certificate to teach high school.

     King's next idea came from the poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." He found bright colored green paper in the library and began work on The Dark Tower saga. But due to his lack of income, he was unable to further pursue the novel at great length and it too was filed away. King took a job of pumping gas earning $1.25 an hour. King then began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to magazines.

      On January 2, 1971, Tabitha Jane Spruce and Stephen King were married. And in the fall of 1971, King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of Bangor, Maine. King then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White. After completing a few pages, King decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately for Stephen, his wife Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story. He did. In January 1973, King submitted Carrie to Doubleday. In March, Doubleday bought the book. On May 12, Doubleday sold the paperback rights of Carrie to New American Library for $400,000. Based on the book contract, Stephen King would get half of that. King quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. And the rest, as they say, is history.

      Stephen King is called "The Master of Horror". His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine with his wife where he writes out of his home.

Stephen King also wrote books as Richard Bachman. The first few books are listed here.

Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power, 1974. About a girl who can move things with her mind and what happens to people who are cruel to her.

Salem's Lot, 1975. A combination haunted house and vampire story.

The Shining, 1977. A story about a boy, his family, and a haunted hotel.

The Stand, 1978. A story about how good and evil fight for a new world.

The Dead Zone, 1979. A story about a man who is cursed with seeing the future.

Firestarter, 1980. A story about a little girl who can start fires with her mind.

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Carrie named to School Library Journal's Book List, 1975;

World Fantasy Award nominations, 1976, for Salem's Lot, 1979, for The Stand and Night Shift, 1980, for The Dead Zone, 1981, for "The Mist, " and 1983, for "The Breathing Method: A Winter's Tale", in Different Seasons;

Hugo Award nomination, World Science Fiction Society, and Nebula Award nomination, Science Fiction Writers of America, both 1978, both for The Shining;

Balrog Awards, second place in best novel category, for The Stand and second place in best collection category for Night Shift, both 1979;

American Library Association's list of best books for young adults, 1979, for The Long Walk(by Richard Bachman), and 1981, for Firestarter;

World Fantasy Award, 1980, for contributions to the field, and 1982, for story "Do the Dead Sing?"; Career Alumni Award, University of Maine at Orono, 1981;

Nebula Award nomination, Science Fiction Writers of America, 1981, for story "The Way Station";

British Fantasy Award for outstanding contribution to the genre, British Fantasy Society, 1982, for Cujo;
Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1982, for Stephen King's Danse Macabre ;

Best Fiction Writer of the Year, Us Magazine, 1982;

Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Horror Writers Association, 1988, for Misery;
Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection, 1991, for Four Past Midnight;
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novelette, Horror Writers Association, 1996, for "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe";
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, 1997, for The Green Mile;
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Horror Writers Association, 1999, for Bag of Bones;
Bram Stoker Award for Nonfiction, Horror Writers Association, 2000, for On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

World Fantasy award for short story, 1995, for "The Man in the Black Suit";