Editing Stephen King (section)

==Early life and education==
King was born in [[Portland, Maine]], on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a traveling vacuum salesman after returning from [[World War II]], was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing it to King as an adult.<ref>{{cite episode|series=[[Finding Your Roots]]|network=[[PBS]]|airdate=September 23, 2014|title=In Search of our Fathers| season=2|number=1|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=ni7DKO5plhk |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/ni7DKO5plhk| archive-date=December 11, 2021 |url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}</ref> King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury).<ref>{{cite book |last1=King |first1=Stephen |author1-link=Stephen King |title=On writing: a memoir of the craft |date=2000 |publisher=Scribner |location=New York |isbn=978-0684853529 |page=17 }}</ref> His parents were married in [[Scarborough, Maine]], on July 23, 1939. They lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving to [[Croton-on-Hudson, New York]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Lisa |last=Rogak |title=Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMbYYw_6200C&pg=PT14 |date=January 5, 2010 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-4299-8797-4 |page=14 |access-date=December 22, 2019 |archive-date=November 4, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211104005858/https://books.google.com/books?id=yMbYYw_6200C&pg=PT14 |url-status=live }}</ref> King's parents returned to Maine towards the end of [[World War II]], living in a modest house in Scarborough. He is of [[Scotch-Irish Americans|Scots-Irish]] descent.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/exclusive-interview-stephen-king-best-selling-author-speaks-about-his-life-career-and-scottish-weather-1655084|work=[[The Scotsman]]|title=Exclusive interview: Stephen King - the best-selling author speaks about his life, career and Scottish weather|date=November 5, 2011|url-status=live|archive-url=https://archive.today/20230506113414/https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/exclusive-interview-stephen-king-best-selling-author-speaks-about-his-life-career-and-scottish-weather-1655084|archive-date=May 6, 2023}}</ref>

When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. 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]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Lisa |last=Rogak |title=Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yMbYYw_6200C&pg=PT15 |date=January 5, 2010 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-4299-8797-4 |page=15 |access-date=December 22, 2019 |archive-date=November 4, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211104005858/https://books.google.com/books?id=yMbYYw_6200C&pg=PT15 |url-status=live }}</ref> When King was 11, his family moved to [[Durham, Maine]], where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. After that, she became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. 

King says he started writing when he was "about six or seven, just copying panels out of comic books and then making up my own stories ... Film was also a major influence. I loved the movies from the start. So when I started to write, I had a tendency to write in images because that was all I knew at the time."<ref name=":ParisReview">{{Cite news |author1=[[Nathaniel Rich (novelist)| Nathaniel Rich]] |author2=[[Christopher Lehmann-Haupt]] |date=Fall 2006 |title=Stephen King: The Art of Fiction No. 189 |work=[[The Paris Review]] |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5653/the-art-of-fiction-no-189-stephen-king}}</ref> Regarding his interest in horror, he says "my childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did."<ref>{{cite news| title=Stephen King: 'My Imagination Was Very Active — Even At A Young Age| author=[[Terry Gross]]| work=[[National Public Radio]]| url=https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/633002291/stephen-king-my-imagination-was-very-active-even-at-a-young-age |quote=I've been queried a lot about where I get my ideas or how I got interested in this stuff. And at some point, a lot of interviewers just turn into Dr. Freud and put me on the couch and say, what was your childhood like? And I say various things, and I confabulate a little bit and kind of dance around the question as best as I can, but bottom line - my childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did.}}</ref> He recalls showing his mother a story he copied out of a comic book. She responded: "I bet you could do better. Write one of your own." He recalls "an immense feeling of ''possibility'' at the idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given the key to open any I liked."<ref>{{cite book | last=King  | first= Stephen  | title= [[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]] | date=2000 |page=28}}</ref> King was a voracious reader in his youth: "I read everything from [[Nancy Drew]] to ''[[Psycho (novel)|Psycho]]''. My favorite was ''[[The Shrinking Man]]'', by [[Richard Matheson]]—I was 8 when I found that."<ref name=":ByTheBook">{{Cite news |date=June 14, 2015 |title=Stephen King: By the Book |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/books/review/stephen-king-by-the-book.html?_r=1}}</ref> 

King's aunt Gert, who paid him a [[Quarter (United States coin)|quarter]] for every story he produced; his surviving earliest works include "[[Jhonathan and the Witchs]]", which he wrote at the age of nine.<ref name="WoodKing2012">{{cite book|first1=Rocky|last1=Wood|author-link1=Rocky Wood|first2=Stephen|last2=King|author-link2=Stephen King|title=Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E9mAtwAACAAJ|year=2012|publisher=Overlook Connection Press|isbn=978-1-892950-59-8|pages=184–185}}</ref>

King asked a [[bookmobile]] driver, "Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She gave him ''[[Lord of the Flies]]''. It proved formative: "It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands—strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, 'This is not just entertainment; it's life or death.'... To me, ''Lord of the Flies'' has always represented what novels are ''for,'' why they are indispensable."<ref name=":LordOfTheFlies">King, Stephen. Introduction. ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'', [[William Golding]], 1954, William Golding Centenary ed. Faber and Faber, 2011. pp. vi-ix.</ref> He attended Durham Elementary School and entered [[Lisbon High School (Maine)|Lisbon High School]] in [[Lisbon Falls, Maine]], in 1962.<ref name="OfficialBio">{{cite web |last1=King |first1=Tabitha |last2=DeFilippo |first2=Marsha |title=The Author |url=https://stephenking.com/the-author/ |access-date= |work=stephenking.com}}</ref> He contributed to ''Dave's Rag'', the newspaper his brother printed with a [[mimeograph machine]], and later sold stories to his friends. His first independently published story was "[[I Was a Teenage Grave Robber]]", serialized over four issues of the [[fanzine]] ''Comics Review'' in 1965. He was a sports reporter for Lisbon's ''Weekly Enterprise''.

In 1966, King entered the [[University of Maine at Orono]] on a scholarship. While there, he wrote for the student newspaper, ''The Maine Campus'', and found mentors in the professors Edward Holmes and [[Burton Hatlen]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=July 25, 2010 |title=Edward M. Holmes |work=[[Bangor Daily News]] |url=https://www.bangordailynews.com/2010/07/25/obituaries/edward-m-holmes/}}</ref><ref name="bn">{{Cite news |last=Anstead |first=Alicia |date=January 23, 2008 |title=UM scholar Hatlen, mentor to Stephen King, dies at 71 |newspaper=[[Bangor Daily News]] |url=https://archive.bdnblogs.com/2008/01/23/um-scholar-hatlen-mentor-to-stephen-king-dies-at-71/| quote="Not only did he hone his writing under Hatlen's careful eye, but during the workshop he and Spruce fell in love and eventually married."}}</ref><ref name=":Singer">{{Cite magazine|author=[[Mark Singer (journalist)|Mark Singer]] |date=September 7, 1998 |title=What Are You Afraid Of? |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/09/07/what-are-you-afraid-of |magazine=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref> King participated in a writing workshop organized by Hatlen, where he fell in love with [[Tabitha King| Tabitha Spruce]].<ref name="bn"/> King graduated in 1970 with a [[Bachelor of Arts#United States|Bachelor of Arts]] in English, and his daughter Naomi Rachel was born that year. King and Spruce wed in 1971.<ref name="OfficialBio"/> King paid tribute to Hatlen: "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called 'the language pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.' That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim."<ref name="bn"/>