NEW YORK – There’s a whiff of horror about PEN America’s new Literary Service Award winner – it’s Stephen King.

The literary and human rights organization will honor King with the award May 22 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Bangor, Maine, resident’s new novel, “The Outsider,” is being published on that date.

The award is handed out every year to a critically acclaimed writer “whose body of work helps us understand and interpret the human condition, engendering empathy and imagination in even the darkest hours.”

King’s books include “It,” “The Stand” and “Misery.”

Other writers who have won the prize include Stephen Sondheim, J.K. Rowling, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood.