Tabitha King
Encyclopedia : T : TA : TAB : Tabitha King
Tabitha King (March 24, 1949-), maiden name Tabitha Spruce, is an American writer, the wife of writer Stephen King, and the mother of three children.
Tabitha King was born Tabitha Jane-Frances Spruce in Old Town, Maine, on the twenty-fourth of March, 1949. She is one of eight children of Raymond George and Sarah Jane White Spruce.
Her primary education was at St. Mary’s Grammar in Old Town, graduating in 1963. Secondary was at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, completed in 1967. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Maine in Orono between 1967-1971. At her work-study job in the Fogler Library, she met her husband, Stephen King. They were married January 2, 1971 and have three children, Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom and Owen Phillip.
She has published seven novels: Small World, Macmillan, 1981; Caretakers, Macmillan, 1983; The Trap, Macmillan, 1985; Pearl, New American Library, 1988; One on One, Dutton, 1993; Book of Reuben, Dutton, 1994; Survivor, William Abrahams, Dutton, 1997. All were published in paperback by New American Library (and Pearl in hardcover as well). All received critical praise, some of it very high. Her reader ratings on Amazon.com are four star or higher. Survivor carried the prestigious imprint of the late William Abrahams, who edited the annual O. Henry Awards short story compilation for thirty years before his death in 1998. Her work has been noted for its grittiness and power.
Tabitha King also published the nonfiction Playing Like a Girl; Cindy Blodgett and the Lawrence Bulldogs Season of 93-94, Dendrite, 1994 and has published a piece on Cindy Blodgett in the Boston Globe Magazine.
She contributed to:
Murderers Ink: The Better Half of the Mystery, Dilys Winn, ed., Bell, 1979
Shadows, Volume 4, C. L. Grant, ed., Doubleday, 1981
Midlife Confidential, ed. David Marsh et al, photographs by Tabitha King, Viking Penguin, 1994
Tabitha King serves on the board of directors of Shaw House, an adolescent homeless shelter in Bangor, Maine, on the board of Maine Public Broadcasting System, and on the board of the Bangor Public Library. She has served on the board of the University of Maine Press and on the Maine Council for the Humanities. In 1996, she served as chair of the campaign for the renovation of the Bangor Public Library, which raised over eight million dollars, the largest charitable campaign to date in the city of Bangor. In 1997, she was co-chair of a more modest but also successful campaign to raise the money to buy a former school building as a permanent home for Shaw House. She also serves as vice president of WZON/WKIT and in the administration of two family philanthropic foundations.
In May 1987, she and Stephen were awarded Honorary Doctorates of Human Letters from their alma mater.
In 1998, she was the recipient of the first Annual Constance Carlson Humanities Prize, awarded for service to the advancement of the Humanities.
She is a mycophile, a kayaker, and a photographer. In Art her taste runs to Surrealism. Her taste in music is eclectic, ranging from the Baroque Classical compositions of Hadyn and Vivaldi to Marilyn Manson. She enjoys both fiction and non-fiction, though she considers the latter term to be highly inaccurate. In her spare time, she takes in laundry and works on her cold fusion project.
Bibliography
- 1981 Small World
- 1983 Caretakers *
- 1985 The Trap (also published as Wolves at the Door) *
- 1988 Pearl *
- 1993 One on One *
- 1994 The Book of Reuben *
- 1997 Survivor
- 2006 ''Candles Burning - with Michael McDowell
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.