Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television shows, and comic books. King has published 54 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and six non-fiction books. He has written nearly 200 short stories, most of which have been collected in book collections. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine. His novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was the basis for the movie The Shawshank Redemption which is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. His novella The Way Station (1980) was a Nebula Award novelette nominee. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. His short story "The Man in the Black Suit" (1994) received the O. Henry Award. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire oeuvre, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007). In 2015, King was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the United States National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.

Creative writing

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwrighting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.

Neil Gaiman

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (/ˈɡeɪmən/; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

Early life

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (/ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker and actor. His films are characterized by non-linear storylines, satirical subject matter, an aestheticization of violence, utilization of ensemble casts, references to pop culture, their soundtracks, and features of neo-noir film.

Tarantino grew up as a devoted film fan and worked at Video Archives, a video rental store, while training to act. His career began in the late 1980s, when he wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday, the screenplay of which formed the basis for True Romance. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of Reservoir Dogs in 1992; regarded as a classic and cult hit, it was called the "Greatest Independent Film of All Time" by Empire. Its popularity was boosted by his second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a black comedy crime film that was a major success both among critics and audiences. Judged the greatest film from 1983–2008 by Entertainment Weekly, many critics and scholars have named it one of the most significant works of modern cinema. For his next effort, Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch.