Stephen King

Stephen King burst into the world on September 21, 1947, up in Portland, Maine—yeah, the horror master himself. His dad, Donald, took off for cigarettes one night and just vanished, leaving his mom, Nellie, to hustle and drag Stephen and his older brother David across different states, scraping by until they landed back in sleepy Durham, Maine, in ’58. Young Steve was a weird, bookish kid—he and David cranked out a dinky local paper called “Dave’s Rag” on a mimeograph, selling it for a nickel. Not exactly The New York Times, but hey, it was a start. School? Meh, nothing special. King admits he was pretty much invisible in high school, neither a genius nor a total slacker. He started banging out stories as a teen, publishing little collections with his buddy Chris, and even got his first real story in “Comics Review” at seventeen. He kept writing, even when rejections piled up and his first novel got booted by Random House. That one stung. Money was tight, so he pumped gas and sold stories to men’s mags, barely scraping by until he landed a teaching gig. Then came “Carrie.” He almost chucked the whole thing in the trash, but his wife Tabitha fished it out and told him to keep going. Good call—Doubleday snapped it up and the paperback rights scored him a fat check, enough to finally ditch teaching. From there? The guy just didn’t stop—books, movies, the works. The King of horror was up and running.