Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (2017)
Sample of authors
King, Stephen
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, Donald Pollock, a vacuum cleaner salesman, sailor and philanderer (King has a half-sister in Brazil), went through a number of aliases before he changed his surname to King. When Stephen was two years old, his father went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. Stephen grew up in poor circumstances with his mother Ruth and his...
Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex (2017)
Sample of authors
Whitehead, Colson
American writer Art Colson Chipp Whitehead spent his early years at 139th Riverside in Harlem, a tough place by his reckoning. His family later moved to other living quarters in Manhattan. His parents were middle class and well-to-do. Whitehead had three siblings. The children attended private schools, but his father still considered it mandatory to teach him the art of survival in such a racist...