Novelist to write monthly magazine column

BANGOR (AP) – When he was in college at the University of Maine in the 1960s, best-selling author Stephen King had a column, “King’s Garbage Truck,” that ran in the student newspaper.

The Bangor novelist will soon have a column again, this time in Entertainment Weekly magazine.

It marks the first time King has written a regularly scheduled column since his university days.

King’s monthly column will be called “The Pop of King” and will debut in the Aug. 8 issue. It will be an opinion column on pop culture and will take a look at books, movies, TV, music and more.

In the introduction to his first column, King explained that he wrote a review of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” for the magazine a few months back.

The editors came back to him, King said, because they either liked the review or the fact that it was written in longhand, pen on paper.

“For all I know, they might have thought it would be good to have to least one writer on tap who could turn in copy even after a nuclear pulse wiped out the hard drives on all the laptops,” King wrote.

King also wrote that he hadn’t written a regular column since he wrote for the Maine Campus during college. But when the magazine’s editors asked him, he decided to give it a try.

Rick Tetzeli, Entertainment Weekly’s managing editor, said King and the magazine are a natural pairing.

In his “Letter From the Editor” introducing King’s column, Tetzeli wrote that King’s column will be “opinionated, surprising, current and passionate.”

King’s connection with Entertainment Weekly started in 1991, when he wrote about becoming “America’s Best-Loved Boogeyman.” He’s also been an occasional contributor to the magazine’s letters column with his thought on the magazine’s coverage.

AP-ES-08-05-03 1008EDT

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