Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, and was primarily raised by his mother. He, his mother, and his brother, David, moved to Indiana and then Connecticut before returning to Maine to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended the University of Maine at Orono, where he wrote for his school newspaper and met his future wife, Tabitha. After they graduated, he and Tabitha survived on a combination of his earnings from an industrial laundry company, her savings, and the money he made from selling short stories. Many of the stories he wrote during this time were collected in Night Shift, the 1978 anthology in which “The Last Rung on the Ladder” appears.

In 1971, King began teaching English at a high school in Maine, but he continued to write in his spare time. Carrie, his first novel, was published in 1974 and was so successful that he was able to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published nearly 200 short stories and over 70 fiction and nonfiction books, including several that were made into iconic movies, such as The Shining, It, and Misery. His awards include the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to the American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts.