Stephen King once discontinued his own book, fearing it was inspiring school shootings.

After his popularity surged, Stephen King began using a pseudonym to release more books.

King was outed as Bachman by a bookstore clerk

King published several books in the 1970s and '80s under the pen name Richard Bachman, a device that allowed him to publish outside the horror genre. Eventually, Bachman was unmasked when a bookshop clerk noticed similarities between the Bachman novel "Thinner" and some of King's other titles. A 2024 study in the Journal of Computational Literary Studies used quantitative methods to find similarities between works published under Bachman and King, arguing that genuine literary voices are immutable, despite some authors' efforts.

Stephen King threw the draft of 'Carrie,' his first hit, into the trash, but his wife rescued it and convinced him to stick with it.

Stephen King is drawn to horror's childish power

This 1986 appearance promoting King's directorial debut finds him reflecting on what makes horror, which he says is its ability to strip away pretense, reducing supposedly sophisticated people to terrified children. He also seems to have already soured on the movie business, calling filmmaking "a primitive way to create," a not-so-subtle dig at Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining," which notoriously disappointed King.

Stephen King was struck and nearly killed by a van that he later purchased.

Stephen King, Octavia Butler, and Anthony Burgess all grew to regret books they'd published

Some, like Butler, regretted writing predictable, trope-heavy books. Others, like King and Burgess, regretted that what they'd intended as satire had been misunderstood as endorsements.

In 1996, Stephen King dominated the publishing industry, occupying 6 of the 15 spots on the New York Times bestseller list with his 'Green Mile' books.

King has published more than 60 novels

Since 1974, the writer has published a staggering number of books, often releasing a title a year (and sometimes more than that). This comprehensive list from King's official website lists everything the man has ever done, including unpublished stories, long-forgotten television specials, and limited edition novels. It's a fascinating look into the artistic life of one of America's most successful writers.

Kurt Vonnegut's letter to the school board that banned his book

In 1973, a high school English teacher in North Dakota taught Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five," the classic time-hopping novel about World War II and the bombing of Dresden. The head of the school board was outraged by what he considered to be obscene material in Vonnegut's novel and ordered all of the students' copies of the book burned. When Vonnegut caught wind of those plans, he wrote this letter to the school board, protesting the decision.

King's books are now taught by college professors

Stephen King’s horror, fantasy, and science fiction were once considered lowbrow and unworthy of serious academic study. That's changed over the last 50 years, with King courses and symposiums taking place at universities around the world.

Stephen King isn't sure writing can be taught, encouraging aspiring novelists to read as much as possible instead.

In 1999, King survived a near-fatal car accident

In 1999, a distracted driver hit writer Stephen King as he walked on the side of the road near his house in Maine. He recounts the event in his famous memoir, "On Writing." This interview with Katie Couric took place five months after the accident and shows King in a fragile state, wondering about the long-term effects on his mind. When Couric asks if he'll try to work the incident into his work, he smiles. "Sooner or later," he says, "everything goes in."

Stephen King's basement inspired a Ramones classic

The horror writer was a fan of the band and invited them to his home in Maine. While hanging out in the basement, Dee Dee Ramone, the band's bassist, stole away with a copy of King's "Pet Sematary" and wrote a song about it. The song appeared in the film adaptation of the book, which began shooting a month later.

King's 'On Writing' is a classic text about his craft

Stephen King is known first and foremost as a horror writer. However, one of his best-known books happens to be nonfiction. “On Writing,” published in 2000, is part autobiography and part instruction manual. King explains how he came to his craft and offers advice on ways aspiring writers can improve.

Horror exploded as a commercial literary genre in the late 1960s

Ira Levin’s 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby” showed publishers horror was a viable commercial genre. That was proven again in 1971, with William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” and again in 1974 with Stephen King’s “Carrie.” The books dealt with societal fears (the occult, drugs, sex) during a time of political upheaval.

David Foster Wallace admired Stephen King's writing

David Foster Wallace was one of the most acclaimed American writers of the 1990s and early 2000s, releasing dense, philosophically informed works of literary fiction. When the syllabus for an undergraduate literature course he taught surfaced through his archives at the University of Texas, many of his fans were surprised to find it included so much supposedly commercial fiction, including Stephen King's "Carrie." Below are his annotations on two pages of the novel.

'Carrie' kick-started a wildly successful career

King has published more than 60 novels—along with dozens of novellas, hundreds of short stories, and several collections of nonfiction—and has sold over 400 million books. This 2024 interview finds him reflecting on his debut novel, and breakthrough hit, "Carrie," and the wild success that followed.

Before he was a famous novelist, John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery.

King is a major influence on modern genre writers

Stephen King's influence is felt across literature, film, and television—even outside the many books and adaptations that make up his long and storied career. This podcast features interviews with "Lost" showrunner Damon Lindelof and horror novelist Grady Hendrix, two writers who also happen to be King superfans.

Contemporary horror novelists on their favorite scary stories

Ten of horror's best writers name the books that still give them nightmares. From established classics, like Stephen King's "IT" and Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House," to unexpected picks like Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love," this collection of scary stories is a perfect reading list for Halloween.

Joyce Carol Oates praised King's working-class characters

Joyce Carol Oates is a writer who, like Stephen King, has a massive body of work that moves between styles and genres. Unlike King, she was never derided by critics as being overly commercial. Introducing King at Princeton University in 1997 and 2016, she made the case for King as a serious American writer in the Gothic tradition of Edgar Allan Poe.

Jackson's 'The Lottery' inspired a trove of angry letters to The New Yorker

The writer's short story "The Lottery" is widely taught in American schools and with good reason—it's a masterful and horrifying story about the dangers of blind tradition. After its initial publication in The New Yorker, 150 readers wrote letters calling the story "outrageous," "gruesome," and "utterly pointless." Listen to a reading of the story below and a discussion of why it provoked such outraged responses.

What business leaders can learn from Stephen King

Stephen King's "On Writing" is one of the definitive craft books, a subgenre of nonfiction aimed at writers looking to learn from the titans of literature. This podcast explores the book's lessons from a business perspective, gleaning lessons in leadership from King's famous text.

JD Salinger, author of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' stopped publishing in 1965, though he continued writing until his death in 2010, with some estimates saying he completed 5 additional books.

Mark Twain started writing 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' to distract himself.

An early short story by Ray Bradbury was plucked from an open submission call by 'In Cold Blood' author Truman Capote, who believed he'd found a significant voice.

'The Stranger' remains a popular novel for teenagers

Camus' book's themes—alienation, transgression, and existentialism—continue to resonate with adolescent reader. That's also true of other popular teenage touchstones, like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," and Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar," which are still widely read—and assigned by high school teachers. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The oft-cited roots of the true crime genre

The 1966 book "In Cold Blood" by American author Truman Capote is often considered the beginning of true crime as it's known today. The story details the real-life murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas, using techniques that, at the time, were relegated to fictional tales. Before it was a book, the narrative was published by The New Yorker in 1965 as a four-part series. 

Why school boards ban dystopian books

Journalist Ali Velshi analyzes the lasting appeal of Lois Lowry's "The Giver" and George Orwell's "1984," two dystopian novels that have courted controversy since their publications. Beyond his interpretations, though, Velshi wants to understand why school boards perennially ban these books—and what makes them so fascinating for adolescent readers. In his search, he talks to Lowry about the lasting influence of her novel and to Orwell expert James McCallister about the prescient political portrait in "1984."

Science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury couldn't afford college, but he spent several days a week in his local library, teaching himself how to become a writer.

Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' was originally called 'The Fireman,' but he changed the title after learning the temperature at which paper burns.

King sets many of his stories in Maine

In the process, he has created a few fictional towns. This extensive travelogue by a superfan explores the writer's favorite haunts, pinpointing specific details from and inspirations for King's fiction. Helpfully, it also provides plenty of photos, allowing you to venture through King's haunted version of the state without ever leaving the comfort of your home.

Bruce Springsteen was initially so unhappy with his album 'Born to Run' that he threw it in a swimming pool.

The story of the real-life 'Lord of the Flies'

William Golding's 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies" is about a group of schoolboys who crash land on a remote island and are forced to fend for themselves. It's a situation that ends in chaos and, at least according to generations of English teachers, reveals the cruelty lurking in all of us. But a real-life story eerily similar to Golding's novel suggests something very different.

Hear from both sides of the attempt to ban books across the country, which spiked by more than 1,100% between 2020 and 2022

During that period, more than 2,500 titles were challenged across 37 states, with activists targeting books on race, slavery, and gender identity. This CBS report hears from the founders of Moms for Liberty, a teacher removed for giving students access to banned books, and "Maus" cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

'Huckleberry Finn' has a long history of book bans

Twain’s most famous novel was first banned in March 1885. Librarians in Concord, Massachusetts, called it “suitable only for the slums.” Since then, it’s been banned many more times, mostly because of how it deals with race. In recent decades, its use of the N-word, has led to its removal.

Mapping fiction's imagined breakdowns of the US after apocalypse

Post-apocalyptic fiction in the US is at least a century old, and how the future is envisioned reflects contemporary anxieties and divisions. This piece examines the various creative maps birthed from the tradition from Jack London's 1912 "The Scarlet Plague," a pandemic novel set in 2073, through Stephen King's "The Stand", dystopian "The Hunger Games," and visions of civil war.

Twain ruthlessly criticized other writers

The writer was known for lambasting popular writers of his time, including Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson. One of his most famous takedowns is “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” an essay that simultaneously mocks Cooper’s popular adventure tales and satirizes the pretentiousness of literary criticism. Remarking on Cooper’s novel “The Deerslayer,” Twain wrote, “its conversations are—oh! Indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.”

Rockwell's 'Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice)' was a response to real events

The 1965 painting was inspired by the 1964 murders of three men—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The men were affiliated with the Council on Racial Equity and killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The painting accompanied an article about the inequities of the justice system, which is why its title often includes the parenthetical "(Southern Justice)."

Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood,' a pioneer of the true crime genre, isn't wholly accurate

The nonfiction novel "In Cold Blood" influenced true crime's narrative and investigative bend and was supposedly only 92% accurate. Journalist Ben Yagoda reflects on its accuracy after finding the fact-checking file for the four-part series published before the story was converted into hardback. Yagoda says the inaccuracies are "especially striking" because the story was originally published in one of the magazines credited with establishing fact-checking as a practice. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Dystopian books have grown especially popular with younger audiences

In the late 2000s, Suzanne Collins’s dystopian "The Hunger Games," a young adult book series where impoverished children are pitted against one another for entertainment, spent over five years on The New York Times bestseller list.

In 1969, a group of reporters wrote an intentionally bad and salacious novel under a pen name to prove that sex sells more than quality. It sold 20,000 copies within a few months and spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.

The 2017 adaptation of King's 'IT' is the most successful horror movie ever

The 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel "IT" wasn't the first adaptation for the screen, but it was the most successful. It broke multiple box-office records, becoming the highest-grossing horror movie in history. This resource breaks down every record it broke in its theatrical release.

A lost Jack Kerouac story was discovered in the belongings of a gunned-down mob boss

The unpublished "The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing" was found in the belongings of Paul Castellano, who was murdered in 1985. It's unclear why Castellano had it, though an heir says it was originally in the collection of a "noted San Francisco-based poet...who received it directly from the author."

King was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 2014

For decades, Stephen King has been a pop-culture titan, though he was often pegged as unserious and formulaic by the more high-minded literary establishment. That began to change in the 1990s, with critical reconsiderations of his work. It was fully cemented in 2014, when he received the National Medal of Arts.

Book-banning attempts remained near record highs in 2025

The American Library Association recorded 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, the second-highest level ever documented. Nearly all challenges, 92%, came from organized groups or government officials rather than individual parents.

‘Frankenstein’ is a classic horror novel

Few novels have been as influential as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” The 1818 novel is considered the first science fiction novel and a cornerstone of the horror genre. The text has also been widely adapted for the screen and is responsible for at least two major archetypes: the creature and the mad scientist.

The earliest novelistic writing about a real-life murder might be an 1875 essay by poet Celia Thaxter

Though the nonfiction novel "In Cold Blood" is often cited as the beginning of the true crime genre, records show that true crime narratives were woven for decades before the novel's 1965 serialization. In "A Memorable Murder," Thaxter recounts the slaughter of her neighboring New England islanders.

JD Salinger served in World War II while working on a draft of his most famous novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye.'