Does Stephen King come from Topeka, Kansas??

Question

I was having dinner at a Denny's in Topeka, and this fellow diner claimed to be Stephen King. He looked a lot like him. At first I was sceptical, but he pulled out some ID...and his name was Stephen KIng. I questioned him a lot, and am now convinced he was indeed the horror writer. The only thing that nagged at me was that he said he was born and raised in Topeka.

Answer 1

Stephen King was born in Maine and is currently living in Bangor, Maine. I hate to burst you're bubble, but I think the person you met was a psychotic fan that has read his stuff on the famous writer and can easily pass as the guy. And plus, I would like to think Stephen King in public keeps quiet because he doesn't want a crowd mauling him everywhere he goes. Sorry.

Answer 2

no he doesn't

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, and has English and Scots-Irish ancestry.[1][2] When King was two years old, his father, Donald Edwin King, deserted his family. His mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury, raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon High School. He grew to stand 6'4" tall.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

No, Stephen King the writer was born and raised in Maine. He went to college in Maine, where he met and married his wife Tabitha, who is also a writer. If he has been to Topeka, Kansas, it was back in the early 90's when he was touring to promote his new book 'Insomnia'.

Answer 4

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine

Answer 5

I am under the impression that he is from Portland, Maine.

Answer 6

He is from Maine...

Answer 7

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, and has English and Scots-Irish ancestry.[1][2] When King was two years old, his father, Donald Edwin King, deserted his family. His mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury, raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon High School. He grew to stand 6'4" tall.

King has been writing since an early age. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he had seen recently and sold them to his friends. This was not popular among his teachers, and he was forced to return his profits when this was discovered. The stories were copied using a mimeo machine that his brother David used to copy a newspaper, Dave's Rag, which he self-published. Dave's Rag was about local events, and King would often contribute. At around the age of thirteen, King discovered a box of his father's old books at his aunt's house, mainly horror and science fiction. He was immediately hooked on these genres.

His first published story was "In a Half-World of Terror" (retitled from "I Was a Teen-Age Grave-robber", published in a horror fanzine issued by Mike Garrett of Birmingham, Alabama.

From 1966 to 1971, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono, Maine. At the university, he wrote a column titled "King's Garbage Truck" in the student newspaper, the Maine Campus. He also met Tabitha Spruce; they married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He used the experience to write the short story "The Mangler". The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis.

After finishing his university studies with a Bachelor of Arts in English and obtaining a certificate to teach high school, King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. During this time, he and his family lived in a trailer. He wrote short stories (most were published in men's magazines) to help make ends meet. As told in the introduction in Carrie, if one of his kids got a cold, Tabitha would joke, "Come on, Steve, think of a monster." King also developed a drinking problem which stayed with him for over a decade.

During this period, King began a number of novels. One of his first ideas was of a young girl with psychic powers. However, he grew discouraged, and threw it into the trash. Tabitha later rescued it and encouraged him to finish it. After completing the novel, he titled it Carrie, sent it to Doubleday, and more or less forgot about it. Later, he received an offer to buy it with a $2,500 advance (not a large advance for a novel, even at that time). Shortly after, the value of Carrie was realized with the paperback rights being sold for $400,000 (with $200,000 of it going to the publisher). Shortly after its release, his mother died of uterine cancer. He had the novel read to her before she died.

In On Writing, King admits that at this time he was consistently drunk and that he was an alcoholic for well over a decade. He even admits that he was drunk during his mother’s funeral while delivering the eulogy. He states that he had based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he did not admit it (even to himself) for several years.

Shortly after the publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash on the rug in front of him to show him the evidence of his own addictions: beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine), and marijuana. As King related in his memoir, he sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober.

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Family
Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife Tabitha King, who is also a novelist. They also own a house in the Western Lakes District of Maine. Stephen spends winter seasons in an oceanfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom King (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip, are grown and living on their own.

Topeka? I don't think so.