Stephen King is the most banned author in US schools
Stephen King is the most censored author in US schools, says PEN America, which tracked over 6,800 book bans in the ’24–’25 school year.
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Stephen King has two novels on his to-do list. After that? Well, his Constant Readers will have to wait and see as the legendary writer contemplates a well-deserved break.
“I’m trying to clear my desk as much as I can,” King, 78, tells USA TODAY. “At my age, you’re off the warranty. You can’t take anything for granted.”
This year has enjoyed a slew of adaptations of his works, from movies (“The Monkey,” “The Life of Chuck,” “The Long Walk” and upcoming “The Running Man”) to TV series (“The Institute” and this month’s “It: Welcome to Derry”). The master of horror also dipped back into his detective side for the novel “Never Flinch,” the latest case for his fan-favorite sleuth Holly Gibney.
King plans one more book starring Gibney, one he hopes to write this winter. “I love Holly,” he says. “Right now I am rereading ‘The Outsider’ because I have a way into this last Holly book so I need to refresh myself with that.”
Before that, he still has work to do on his next novel, a third book in a series with his friend Peter Straub that began with 1984’s “The Talisman” and 2001’s “Black House.” At the end of the sequel, King says, it was made “pretty clear” that the fantasy world of the “Talisman” books, the Territories, is also the Mid-World of his “Dark Tower” tomes, so he plans to “button up” both series with the new tome.
Straub had given King some ideas for their third book before his death in 2022. “I kept putting it off when Peter was alive,” he says. “Peter had stuff to do, too. I mean, it wasn’t all on me. But I would say, ‘Well, this time, this time. …’ and time ran out for Peter. That made me feel really bad.”
King wants to take some time off “while I’m still healthy,” he reveals. “You can’t guarantee anything once you get past the age of 75, 76. So you’ve got to be a little bit careful. Anything can happen to anybody. I got hit by a car while I was in my prime, so to speak. I might have another 10, 15 years, but you can’t count on it, that’s all.”
King’s output has always been prodigious, but it has been especially remarkable in his later years. Other writers have been inspired: In an interview about his new novel “King Sorrow,” his son Joe Hill said he wants to be a “book-a-year guy” like King. “He’s a force, man. My dad (sneezes) and then he pulls out the tissue and goes, ‘Oh wow. Look, there’s a novel there.’ ”
What’s his secret? “The thing is, I try to entertain myself,” King says. “I sit down like at quarter of 6 in the morning before anybody’s up, and before my wife’s having her first cup of coffee and she’s in another part of the house. I really enjoy those three or four hours where I can play in a kind of a fantasy world. It’s kind of nice.”
Don’t worry, folks, King’s not retiring tomorrow. As he says, “I’m a busy guy.” But the author concedes he’d “like to stop before I start to drivel. Like, repeat myself. I feel like I’ve still got a little more space to explore, but I have to watch out and not become a bore. I hate that idea, of being a boring person. I’d like to still surprise people a little bit.”
