Age: 78
male
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author. He is widely known for his horror novels and has been crowned the "King of Horror". He has also explored other genres: suspense, crime, science-fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Though known primarily for his novels, he has written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in collections. His debut, Carrie (1974), established him in horror. Different Seasons (1982), a collection of four novellas, was his first major departure from the genre. Among the films adapted from King's fiction are Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), The Dead Zone and Christine (both 1983), Stand by Me(1986), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Green Mile (1999), The Mist (2007), and It (2017). He has also published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and has co-written works with other authors, notably his friend Peter Straub and sons Joe Hill and Owen King. He has also written nonfiction, notably Danse Macabre (1981) and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000). Among other awards, he has won the O. Henry Award for "The Man in the Black Suit" (1994) and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller for 11/22/63 (2011). He has also won honours for his overall contributions to literature, including the 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2014 National Medal of Arts. Joyce Carol Oates called King "a brilliantly rooted, psychologically 'realistic' writer for whom the American scene has been a continuous source of inspiration, and American popular culture a vast cornucopia of possibilities." Description above from the Wikipedia article Stephen King, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
As Roland travels across the desert in search of the man in black, whom he knows as Walter, he encounters a farmer named Brown and Zoltan, Brown's crow. Roland spends the night there and recalls his time spent in Tull, a small town Roland passed through not long before the start of the novel. The man in black had also stayed in the town; he brought a dead man stricken by addiction to the opiate-like "devil grass" back to life and left a trap for Roland. Roland meets the leader of the local church, who reveals to him that the man in black has impregnated her with a demon. She turns the entire town against Roland, and Roland is forced to kill every resident of the town. When he awakens the next day, his mule is dead, forcing him to proceed on foot.
