Stephen King: The King of Horror / Literature

Stephen King (born 1947) is a prolific and immensely popular author of horror fiction. In his works, King blends elements of the traditional gothic tale with those of the modern psychological thriller, detective, and science fiction genres.

Сontinuing the legacy of American writers Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King is perhaps the most famous horror writer of his generation. He is known for his ability to transform the ordinary and everyday into the horrific, a talent that is exhibited in books such as Christine, about a car; Cujo, about a dog; Carrie, about a misunderstood teen; and ‘Salem’s Lot, about the ghostly, vacant house on the hill that exists in every town and is the stuff of neighborhood legend and childish nightmare. As Atlantic Monthly contributor Lloyd Rose wrote, “King takes ordinary emotional situations—marital stress, infidelity, peer-group-acceptance worries—and translates them into violent tales of vampires and ghosts. He writes supernatural soap operas.” While some critics have dismissed King’s work as genre fiction, others recognize the skill and sensitivity with which King taps our collective unconscious; his work was duly honored in 2003 when he received the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

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