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John Grisham

John Ray Grisham Jr. (/ˈɡrɪʃəm/; born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas)[1][2] is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide.[3] Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.[4][5]

John Grisham
John Grisham in 2016
BornJohn Ray Grisham Jr.
(1955-02-08) February 8, 1955 (age 67)
Jonesboro, Arkansas, U.S.
EducationMississippi State University (BS)
University of Mississippi (JD)
Period1989–present
GenresLegal thriller
Crime fiction
Southern Gothic
Baseball
Football
Basketball
Spouse
Renee Grisham
(m. 1981)
Children2
Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives
from the 6th district
In office
1983–1990
Preceded byDon Chambliss
Succeeded byGreg Davis
Personal details
Political partyDemocratic
Website
jgrisham.com

Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.[6]

Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham's first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies.[1] The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel.[7] Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas''.[8]

Early life

Grisham, the second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham.[6] His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker.[9] When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.[6]

As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player.[8] As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe, Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him, and narrowly missed, doing the young Grisham grave harm.

Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college.[1] He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House.[6] Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work".[10]

Through one of his father's contacts, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew, causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it, deciding instead to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer.[11]

He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland.[6] Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree.[1] He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with a J.D. degree.[6]

After leaving law school, he participated in some missionary work in Brazil, under the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[12]

Career

Law and politics

Grisham practiced law for about a decade and won election as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.[6][13] He challenged the incumbent after becoming embarrassed by Mississippi's national reputation and inspired by the passage of the Education Reform Act of 1982.[14] Grisham represented the 7th District, which included DeSoto County, Mississippi.[15] By his second term in the state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.[1] He supported Representative Ed Perry's unsuccessful bid for the House speakership in 1987. With a different speaker elected at the beginning of the 1988 legislative session, Grisham was out of favor with the new legislative leaders and assigned to more minor committee roles. Not as busy with political affairs, he devoted more time to his novel, The Firm. Grisham later reflected that if Perry had become speaker he might have been given more committee responsibilities and thus unable to write.[16]

Grisham's writing career blossomed with the success of his second book, The Firm, and he gave up practicing law, except for returning briefly in 1996 to represent the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job.[1] His official website states: "He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500 — the biggest verdict of his career."[9]

Writing career

 
This house in Lepanto, Arkansas, was the house used in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie A Painted House.

Grisham said a case that inspired his first novel came in 1984, but it was not his case. He heard a 12-year-old girl telling a jury what had happened to her. Her story intrigued Grisham. He saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and beaten. "I remember staring at the defendant and wishing I had a gun." It was then, Grisham later wrote in The New York Times, that a story was born.[11] Over the next three years he wrote his first book, A Time to Kill. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000 copy printing. It was published in June 1988.[6][1]

The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, The Firm. [9] The Firm remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 47 weeks,[1] and became the seventh bestselling novel of 1991.[17] This would begin a streak of having one of the top 10 selling novels of the year for nearly the next two decades. In 1992 and 1993 he had the second bestselling book of the year with The Pelican Brief and The Client and from 1994 to 2000 he had the number one bestselling book every year. In 2001 Grisham did not have the bestselling book of the year but he had both the second and third books on the list with Skipping Christmas and A Painted House.

In 1992, The Firm was made into a film starring Tom Cruise and was released in June 1993, grossing $270 million.[18] A filmed version of The Pelican Brief starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington was released later that year and grossed $195 million.[19] Following their success, Regency Enterprises paid Grisham $2.25 million for the rights to The Client which was released in 1994 starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones and then Universal Pictures paid him the highest amount ever for an unpublished novel, paying $3.75 million for the rights to The Chamber. In August 1994, New Regency paid a record $6 million for the rights to A Time to Kill, with Grisham asking for a guarantee that Joel Schumacher, the director of The Client, would direct.[20]

Beginning with A Painted House, Grisham broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South but continued to write legal thrillers at the rate of one a year. In 2002 he once again claimed the number one book of the year with The Summons. In 2003 and 2004 he missed the number one bestseller of the year due to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown but he once again produced two novels which ended the year in the top 5. In 2004, The Last Juror ended the year at number four and in 2005 he overtook The Da Vinci Code and returned to number one for the year with The Broker. 2006 marked the first time since 1990 that he did not have one of the top selling books of the year, but he returned to number two in 2007, number one in 2008 and number two in 2009.

He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, which starred Harry Connick Jr.[21]

In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, which is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.[22]

In 2010, Grisham started writing a series of legal thrillers for children. They feature Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old who gives his classmates legal advice on a multitude of scenarios, ranging from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. He said, "I'm hoping primarily to entertain and interest kids, but at the same time I'm quietly hoping that the books will inform them, in a subtle way, about law."[23]

He also stated that it was his daughter, Shea, who inspired him to write the Theodore Boone series. "My daughter Shea is a teacher in North Carolina and when she got her fifth grade students to read the book, three or four of them came up afterwards and said they'd like to go into the legal profession."[23]

In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book, and his favorite author is John le Carré.[24]

In 2011 and 2012 his novels The Litigators and The Racketeer claimed the top spot in The New York Times best seller list.[25][26] The novels were among the best selling books of those years, spending several weeks atop various best seller lists.[27][28][29] In 2013 he again reached the top five in the US best-seller list.[30] In November 2015 his novel Rogue Lawyer was at the top of the New York Times Fiction Best Seller for two weeks.[31]

In 2017, Grisham released two legal thrillers. Camino Island was published on June 6, 2017.[32] The book appeared at the top of several best seller lists including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

The Rooster Bar, published on October 24, 2017, was called "his most original work yet", in The News Herald,[33] and a “buoyant, mischievous thriller” in The New York Times.[34]

Southern settings

Several of Grisham's legal thrillers are set in the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi, in the equally fictional Ford County, a northwest Mississippi town still deeply divided by racism. The first novel set in Clanton was A Time to Kill.

Other stories set there include The Last Juror, The Summons, The Chamber, The Reckoning, A Time for Mercy and Sycamore Row. The stories in the collection Ford County are also set in and around Clanton. Other Grisham novels have non-fictional Southern settings, for example The Partner and The Runaway Jury are set in Biloxi, and large portions of The Pelican Brief in New Orleans.

A Painted House is set in and around the town of Black Oak, Arkansas, where Grisham spent some of his childhood.

Personal life

Marriage

Grisham married Renee Jones on May 8, 1981. The couple have two children: Shea and Ty.[6]

Real estate holdings

The family splits their time among their home in Charlottesville, Virginia, a home in Destin, Florida,[35] and a condominium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.[36] Their former and longtime Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi,[9] was given to the University of Mississippi after 2011.

Religion

Grisham is a member of the University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, itself a constituent of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Grisham opposes a literalist understanding of the Bible, and endorses the American separation of church and state.[37]

Baseball

Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball, demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and in Charlottesville. In 1996, Grisham built a $3.8 million youth baseball complex.[38]

In A Painted House, a novel with strong autobiographical elements, the protagonist, a seven-year-old farmer boy, manifests a strong wish to become a baseball player.

He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.[39]

Since moving to the Charlottesville area, Grisham has become a supporter of Virginia Cavaliers athletics and is regularly seen sitting courtside at basketball games.[40] Grisham also contributed to a $1.2 million donation to the Cavalier baseball team in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was used in the 2002 renovation of Davenport Field.[41] His son Ty played college baseball for the University of Virginia.[42]

Political activism

Grisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project, which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence.[43] The Innocence Project contends that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Innocence Project.[44]

Grisham has appeared on Dateline NBC,[45] Bill Moyers Journal on PBS,[46] and other programs. He wrote for The New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.[47]

Grisham opposes capital punishment, a position very strongly manifested in the plot of The Confession.[48][49][50][51] He believes that prison rates in the United States are excessive, and the justice system is "locking up far too many people". Citing examples including "black teenagers on minor drugs charges" to "those who had viewed child porn online", he controversially added that he believed not all viewers of child pornography are necessarily pedophiles. After hearing from numerous people against this position, he later recanted this statement in a Facebook post.[52][53] He went on to clarify that he was defending a former friend from law school who was caught in a sting thinking he was looking at adult porn but it was in reality sixteen- and seventeen-year-old minors and went on to add, "I have no sympathy for real pedophiles. God, please lock those people up." "Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure.... Should be punished to the fullest extent of the law."[54]

The Mississippi State University Libraries, Manuscript Division, maintains the John Grisham Room,[55] an archive containing materials generated during the author's tenure as Mississippi State Representative and relating to his writings.[56] In 2012, the Law Library at the University of Mississippi School of Law was renamed in his honor. It had been named for more than a decade after the late Senator James Eastland.

In 2015, Grisham, along with about 60 others, signed a letter published in the Clarion-Ledger urging that an inset within the flag of Mississippi containing a Confederate flag be removed.[57] He co-authored the letter with author Greg Iles; the pair contacted various public figures from Mississippi for support.[58]

Grisham supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016.[59]

Awards and honors

Bibliography

A complete listing of works by John Grisham:[63]

Denotes novels not in the legal genre

Novels

Jake Brigance series:

  1. A Time to Kill (1989)
  2. Sycamore Row (2013)
  3. A Time for Mercy (2020)
  4. Sparring Partners (2022), novella

Rogue Lawyer series:

0.5. "Partners" (2016), short story
  1. Rogue Lawyer (2015)

The Whistler series:

0.5. "Witness to a Trial" (2016), short story
  1. The Whistler (2016)
  2. The Judge's List (2021)

Camino Island series:

Stand-alones:

Young adult novels

Theodore Boone series:

  1. Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer (2010)
  2. Theodore Boone: The Abduction (2011)
  3. Theodore Boone: The Accused (2012)
  4. Theodore Boone: The Activist (2013)
  5. Theodore Boone: The Fugitive (2015)
  6. Theodore Boone: The Scandal (2016)
  7. Theodore Boone: The Accomplice (2019)

Short stories

Collections:

  • "Ford County" (2009), collection of seven short stories:
    "Blood Drive", "Fetching Raymond", "Fish Files", "Casino", "Michael's Room", "Quiet Haven", "Funny Boy"

Uncollected short stories:

  • "The Tumor" (2016)
  • "Partners" (2016), #0.5 Rogue Lawyer series
  • "Witness to a Trial" (2016), #0.5 The Whistler series

Audiobooks

  • Bleachers (Audible, 2003, read by Grisham)
  • Ford County: Stories (Audible, 2009, read by Grisham)

Non-fiction

Adaptations

Feature films

Television

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "John Grisham: Master of the Legal Thriller (Interview)". American Academy of Achievement. June 2, 1995. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  2. ^ "Monitor". Entertainment Weekly. No. 1245. February 8, 2013. p. 22.
  3. ^ "John Grisham". Academy of Achievement. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
  4. ^ "John Grisham Wins Galaxy Award". Writers Write. March 29, 2007. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  5. ^ Motoko, Rich (July 22, 2007). "Record First-Day Sales for Last 'Harry Potter' Book". The New York Times. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i "John Grisham (1955–)". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  7. ^ "About 'The Firm'". NBC.com. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
  8. ^ a b "John Grisham by Mark Flanagan", About.com; retrieved December 9, 2011.
  9. ^ a b c d John Grisham biography, jgrisham.com; retrieved December 9, 2011.
  10. ^ Grisham, John (September 6, 2010). "Opinion | Boxers, Briefs and Books". The New York Times.
  11. ^ a b Grisham, John (September 6, 2010). "Boxers, Briefs and Books". The New York Times. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  12. ^ Norton, Will Jr. (October 3, 1994). "CONVERSATIONS: Why John Grisham Teaches Sunday School", Christianity Today. Vol. 38, No. 11
  13. ^ Miller, Erin Collazo Biography of John Grisham, Bestsellers.about.com (February 8, 1955); retrieved 2011-12-09.
  14. ^ Nash & Taggart 2009, p. 161.
  15. ^ Mississippi Official and Statistical Register. Mississippi Secretary of State. 1989. p. 162.
  16. ^ Nash & Taggart 2009, pp. 194–195.
  17. ^ "Bestseller Books of the 1990s". About.com. Retrieved December 1, 2007.
  18. ^ The Firm at Box Office Mojo
  19. ^ "The Pelican Brief (1993)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  20. ^ "John Grisham". Daily Variety (61st anniversary ed.). January 12, 1995. p. 12.
  21. ^ "Mickey (2004)", IMDb, retrieved 2019-12-31
  22. ^ "Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award". Tulsa City-County Library. Retrieved February 2, 2018.
  23. ^ a b Middleton, Christopher (May 28, 2010). "Exclusive: best-selling author John Grisham explains why he's courting children with his latest legal thriller". The Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 2022-01-11. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
  24. ^ Rose, Charlie (October 13, 2006). . Charlie Rose Show. Archived from the original on January 27, 2013.
  25. ^ "Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. November 13, 2011.
  26. ^ "Hardcover Fiction Books - Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. November 11, 2012.
  27. ^ "Best-Selling Books, Week Ended Oct. 28". The Wall Street Journal. November 3, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  28. ^ "Best-Selling Books, Week Ended Jan. 1". The Wall Street Journal. January 7, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  29. ^ "Best-Selling Books, Week Ended Oct. 30". The Wall Street Journal. November 5, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  30. ^ "'Sycamore Row' holds top spot on U.S. best-sellers list". Reuters. December 26, 2013. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  31. ^ "Combined Print & E-Book Fiction - Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. November 15, 2015.
  32. ^ Maslin, Janet (May 31, 2017). "Plot Twist! John Grisham's New Thriller Is Positively Lawyerless". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  33. ^ O’Neill, John. "John Grisham pens another exciting legal drama with 'The Rooster Bar'". News-Herald. Sterling Heights, Michigan. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  34. ^ Maslin, Janet (October 25, 2017). "John Grisham Prosecutes For-Profit Law Schools in 'The Rooster Bar'". The New York Times. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  35. ^ Murray, Jocelyn. "Top 10 Best Beaches on the Gulf Coast USA". Tots and Travel. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
  36. ^ Gibson, Dale (July 7, 2008). "John Grisham and wife buy home in Chapel Hill". Triangle Business Journal. Retrieved September 16, 2009.
  37. ^ "Novelist John Grisham Says Church Politicking Hurts Baptist Image" 2019-09-24 at the Wayback Machine. Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
  38. ^ "Diamond Solitarie". The Baltimore Sun. May 1, 2000. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  39. ^ "Take Me Out to the Ballpark". Mississippi State University University Libraries. Mississippi State University. Retrieved December 31, 2019.
  40. ^ "The Night In Sports (Feb. 9)". Sports Illustrated.
  41. ^ Viera, Mark (June 5, 2010). "Virginia Baseball Team Back in Business". The New York Times.
  42. ^ Viera, Mark (June 5, 2010). "Virginia Baseball Team Back in Business". The New York Times. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  43. ^ . The Innocence Project. Archived from the original on February 17, 2007. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  44. ^ . Innocenceproject.org. December 8, 2011. Archived from the original on March 10, 2012. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  45. ^ . Innocence Project. May 22, 2007. Archived from the original on July 6, 2010. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  46. ^ "Bill Moyers Journal". PBS. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  47. ^ Grisham, John (August 10, 2013). "After Guantánamo, Another Injustice". The New York Times.
  48. ^ Woolf, Hannah (September 18, 2006). . University of Virginia School of Law. Archived from the original on March 12, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2016.
  49. ^ Pusey, Allen (September 23, 2011). "John Grisham on Grappling with Race, the Death Penalty; and Lawyers 'Polluting Their Own Profession'". ABA Journal.
  50. ^ Crawford, Melanie L. "A Losing Battle With The 'Machinery Of Death': The Flaws Of Virginia's Death Penalty Laws And Clemency Process Highlighted By The Fate Of Teresa Lewis." Widener Law Review 18.1 (2012): pp. 71–98. Academic Search Complete.
  51. ^ John Grisham (September 12, 2010). "Why is Teresa Lewis on Death Row?", The Washington Post, pg. B-5
  52. ^ Foster, Peter (October 15, 2014). "John Grisham: men who watch child porn are not all paedophiles". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-11. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
  53. ^ Robehmed, Natalie. "Millionaire Author John Grisham Says Not All Men Who Watch Child Porn Are Pedophiles". Forbes.
  54. ^ "John Grisham apologizes for child pornography comments". CBS News.
  55. ^ "The John Grisham Room » Mississippi State University Libraries". library.msstate.edu.
  56. ^ "John Grisham Room now open in library". Mississippi State University. Retrieved December 1, 2007.
  57. ^ "John Grisham, Morgan Freeman, others call for change to Mississippi flag". CNN. August 15, 2015. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  58. ^ "John Grisham: Why Mississippi Will Pull Down the Confederate Flag". Time magazine. August 16, 2015. Retrieved September 11, 2015.
  59. ^ "John Grisham on President Trump: 'These are the easy days'". BBC News.
  60. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement: The Arts". American Academy of Achievement. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  61. ^ Pusey, Allen (July 28, 2011). "John Grisham Wins First Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction". ABA Journal. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
  62. ^ "Archive 2014". Alabama Law, The University of Alabama. Retrieved November 2, 2017.
  63. ^ "John Grisham books".
  64. ^ a b c d e f g h John Grisham Movies 2016-04-09 at the Wayback Machine. Jgrisham.com. Retrieved on December 9, 2011.

Works cited

External links

  • Official website
  • John Grisham at IMDb
  • Appearances on C-SPAN
  • InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: John Grisham (TV Interview)
  • Donald E. Wilkes Jr. 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine, "Kafka (and Grisham) in Oklahoma", Flagpole Magazine, February 7, 2007, pg 9.

john, grisham, grisham, redirects, here, other, people, with, name, grisham, surname, other, uses, grisham, disambiguation, this, article, tone, style, reflect, encyclopedic, tone, used, wikipedia, wikipedia, guide, writing, better, articles, suggestions, june. Grisham redirects here For other people with the name see Grisham surname For other uses see Grisham disambiguation This article s tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia See Wikipedia s guide to writing better articles for suggestions June 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message John Ray Grisham Jr ˈ ɡ r ɪ ʃ e m born February 8 1955 in Jonesboro Arkansas 1 2 is an American novelist lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives known for his popular legal thrillers According to the American Academy of Achievement Grisham has written 28 consecutive number one fiction bestsellers and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide 3 Along with Tom Clancy and J K Rowling Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing 4 5 John GrishamJohn Grisham in 2016BornJohn Ray Grisham Jr 1955 02 08 February 8 1955 age 67 Jonesboro Arkansas U S EducationMississippi State University BS University of Mississippi JD Period1989 presentGenresLegal thrillerCrime fictionSouthern GothicBaseballFootballBasketballSpouseRenee Grisham m 1981 wbr Children2Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from the 6th districtIn office 1983 1990Preceded byDon ChamblissSucceeded byGreg DavisPersonal detailsPolitical partyDemocraticWebsitejgrisham comGrisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981 He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 6 Grisham s first novel A Time to Kill was published in June 1989 four years after he began writing it Grisham s first bestseller The Firm sold more than seven million copies 1 The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name starring Tom Cruise and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel 7 Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films The Chamber The Client A Painted House The Pelican Brief The Rainmaker The Runaway Jury and Skipping Christmas 8 Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2 1 Law and politics 2 2 Writing career 2 2 1 Southern settings 3 Personal life 3 1 Marriage 3 2 Real estate holdings 3 3 Religion 3 4 Baseball 4 Political activism 5 Awards and honors 6 Bibliography 6 1 Novels 6 2 Young adult novels 6 3 Short stories 6 4 Audiobooks 6 5 Non fiction 7 Adaptations 7 1 Feature films 7 2 Television 8 See also 9 References 10 Works cited 11 External linksEarly life EditGrisham the second of five children was born in Jonesboro Arkansas to Wanda nee Skidmore and John Ray Grisham 6 His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer and his mother was a homemaker 9 When Grisham was four years old his family settled in Southaven Mississippi a suburb of Memphis Tennessee 6 As a child he wanted to be a baseball player 8 As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18 after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm Although Grisham s parents lacked formal education his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college 1 He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House 6 Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager watering bushes for 1 00 an hour He was soon promoted to a fence crew for 1 50 an hour He wrote about the job there was no future in it At 16 Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he never drew inspiration from that miserable work 10 Through one of his father s contacts he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17 It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him serious about college A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college His next work was in retail as a salesclerk in a department store men s underwear section which he described as humiliating By this time Grisham was halfway through college Planning to become a tax lawyer he was soon overcome by the complexity and lunacy of it deciding instead to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer 11 He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland 6 Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree 1 He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977 receiving a B S degree in accounting He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer but his interest shifted to general civil litigation He graduated in 1981 with a J D degree 6 After leaving law school he participated in some missionary work in Brazil under the First Baptist Church of Oxford 12 Career EditLaw and politics Edit Grisham practiced law for about a decade and won election as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 6 13 He challenged the incumbent after becoming embarrassed by Mississippi s national reputation and inspired by the passage of the Education Reform Act of 1982 14 Grisham represented the 7th District which included DeSoto County Mississippi 15 By his second term in the state legislature he was the vice chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees 1 He supported Representative Ed Perry s unsuccessful bid for the House speakership in 1987 With a different speaker elected at the beginning of the 1988 legislative session Grisham was out of favor with the new legislative leaders and assigned to more minor committee roles Not as busy with political affairs he devoted more time to his novel The Firm Grisham later reflected that if Perry had become speaker he might have been given more committee responsibilities and thus unable to write 16 Grisham s writing career blossomed with the success of his second book The Firm and he gave up practicing law except for returning briefly in 1996 to represent the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job 1 His official website states He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full time writer Grisham successfully argued his clients case earning them a jury award of 683 500 the biggest verdict of his career 9 Writing career Edit This house in Lepanto Arkansas was the house used in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie A Painted House Grisham said a case that inspired his first novel came in 1984 but it was not his case He heard a 12 year old girl telling a jury what had happened to her Her story intrigued Grisham He saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and beaten I remember staring at the defendant and wishing I had a gun It was then Grisham later wrote in The New York Times that a story was born 11 Over the next three years he wrote his first book A Time to Kill The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press an unknown publisher agreed to give it a modest 5 000 copy printing It was published in June 1988 6 1 The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill he began work on his second novel The Firm 9 The Firm remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 47 weeks 1 and became the seventh bestselling novel of 1991 17 This would begin a streak of having one of the top 10 selling novels of the year for nearly the next two decades In 1992 and 1993 he had the second bestselling book of the year with The Pelican Brief and The Client and from 1994 to 2000 he had the number one bestselling book every year In 2001 Grisham did not have the bestselling book of the year but he had both the second and third books on the list with Skipping Christmas and A Painted House In 1992 The Firm was made into a film starring Tom Cruise and was released in June 1993 grossing 270 million 18 A filmed version of The Pelican Brief starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington was released later that year and grossed 195 million 19 Following their success Regency Enterprises paid Grisham 2 25 million for the rights to The Client which was released in 1994 starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones and then Universal Pictures paid him the highest amount ever for an unpublished novel paying 3 75 million for the rights to The Chamber In August 1994 New Regency paid a record 6 million for the rights to A Time to Kill with Grisham asking for a guarantee that Joel Schumacher the director of The Client would direct 20 Beginning with A Painted House Grisham broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South but continued to write legal thrillers at the rate of one a year In 2002 he once again claimed the number one book of the year with The Summons In 2003 and 2004 he missed the number one bestseller of the year due to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown but he once again produced two novels which ended the year in the top 5 In 2004 The Last Juror ended the year at number four and in 2005 he overtook The Da Vinci Code and returned to number one for the year with The Broker 2006 marked the first time since 1990 that he did not have one of the top selling books of the year but he returned to number two in 2007 number one in 2008 and number two in 2009 He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey which starred Harry Connick Jr 21 In 2005 Grisham received the Peggy V Helmerich Distinguished Author Award which is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust 22 In 2010 Grisham started writing a series of legal thrillers for children They feature Theodore Boone a 13 year old who gives his classmates legal advice on a multitude of scenarios ranging from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed He said I m hoping primarily to entertain and interest kids but at the same time I m quietly hoping that the books will inform them in a subtle way about law 23 He also stated that it was his daughter Shea who inspired him to write the Theodore Boone series My daughter Shea is a teacher in North Carolina and when she got her fifth grade students to read the book three or four of them came up afterwards and said they d like to go into the legal profession 23 In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose show Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and his favorite author is John le Carre 24 In 2011 and 2012 his novels The Litigators and The Racketeer claimed the top spot in The New York Times best seller list 25 26 The novels were among the best selling books of those years spending several weeks atop various best seller lists 27 28 29 In 2013 he again reached the top five in the US best seller list 30 In November 2015 his novel Rogue Lawyer was at the top of the New York Times Fiction Best Seller for two weeks 31 In 2017 Grisham released two legal thrillers Camino Island was published on June 6 2017 32 The book appeared at the top of several best seller lists including USA Today The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times The Rooster Bar published on October 24 2017 was called his most original work yet in The News Herald 33 and a buoyant mischievous thriller in The New York Times 34 Southern settings Edit This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources Please help by adding reliable sources Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately Find sources John Grisham news newspapers books scholar JSTOR July 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message Several of Grisham s legal thrillers are set in the fictional town of Clanton Mississippi in the equally fictional Ford County a northwest Mississippi town still deeply divided by racism The first novel set in Clanton was A Time to Kill Other stories set there include The Last Juror The Summons The Chamber The Reckoning A Time for Mercy and Sycamore Row The stories in the collection Ford County are also set in and around Clanton Other Grisham novels have non fictional Southern settings for example The Partner and The Runaway Jury are set in Biloxi and large portions of The Pelican Brief in New Orleans A Painted House is set in and around the town of Black Oak Arkansas where Grisham spent some of his childhood Personal life EditMarriage Edit Grisham married Renee Jones on May 8 1981 The couple have two children Shea and Ty 6 Real estate holdings Edit The family splits their time among their home in Charlottesville Virginia a home in Destin Florida 35 and a condominium in Chapel Hill North Carolina 36 Their former and longtime Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford Mississippi 9 was given to the University of Mississippi after 2011 Religion Edit Grisham is a member of the University Baptist Church in Charlottesville Virginia itself a constituent of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Grisham opposes a literalist understanding of the Bible and endorses the American separation of church and state 37 Baseball Edit Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford Mississippi and in Charlottesville In 1996 Grisham built a 3 8 million youth baseball complex 38 In A Painted House a novel with strong autobiographical elements the protagonist a seven year old farmer boy manifests a strong wish to become a baseball player He remains a fan of Mississippi State University s baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field A Celebration of MSU Baseball 39 Since moving to the Charlottesville area Grisham has become a supporter of Virginia Cavaliers athletics and is regularly seen sitting courtside at basketball games 40 Grisham also contributed to a 1 2 million donation to the Cavalier baseball team in Charlottesville Virginia which was used in the 2002 renovation of Davenport Field 41 His son Ty played college baseball for the University of Virginia 42 Political activism EditGrisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence 43 The Innocence Project contends that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Innocence Project 44 Grisham has appeared on Dateline NBC 45 Bill Moyers Journal on PBS 46 and other programs He wrote for The New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo 47 Grisham opposes capital punishment a position very strongly manifested in the plot of The Confession 48 49 50 51 He believes that prison rates in the United States are excessive and the justice system is locking up far too many people Citing examples including black teenagers on minor drugs charges to those who had viewed child porn online he controversially added that he believed not all viewers of child pornography are necessarily pedophiles After hearing from numerous people against this position he later recanted this statement in a Facebook post 52 53 He went on to clarify that he was defending a former friend from law school who was caught in a sting thinking he was looking at adult porn but it was in reality sixteen and seventeen year old minors and went on to add I have no sympathy for real pedophiles God please lock those people up Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure Should be punished to the fullest extent of the law 54 The Mississippi State University Libraries Manuscript Division maintains the John Grisham Room 55 an archive containing materials generated during the author s tenure as Mississippi State Representative and relating to his writings 56 In 2012 the Law Library at the University of Mississippi School of Law was renamed in his honor It had been named for more than a decade after the late Senator James Eastland In 2015 Grisham along with about 60 others signed a letter published in the Clarion Ledger urging that an inset within the flag of Mississippi containing a Confederate flag be removed 57 He co authored the letter with author Greg Iles the pair contacted various public figures from Mississippi for support 58 Grisham supported Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign in 2016 59 Awards and honors Edit1993 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 60 2005 Peggy V Helmerich Distinguished Author Award 2007 Galaxy British Lifetime Achievement Award 2009 Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction 2011 The inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for The Confession 61 2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for Sycamore Row 62 Bibliography EditA complete listing of works by John Grisham 63 Denotes novels not in the legal genre Novels Edit Jake Brigance series A Time to Kill 1989 Sycamore Row 2013 A Time for Mercy 2020 Sparring Partners 2022 novellaRogue Lawyer series 0 5 Partners 2016 short storyRogue Lawyer 2015 The Whistler series 0 5 Witness to a Trial 2016 short storyThe Whistler 2016 The Judge s List 2021 Camino Island series Camino Island 2017 Camino Winds 2020 Stand alones The Firm 1991 The Pelican Brief 1992 The Client 1993 The Chamber 1994 The Rainmaker 1995 The Runaway Jury 1996 The Partner 1997 The Street Lawyer 1998 The Testament 1999 The Brethren 2000 A Painted House 2001 Skipping Christmas 2001 The Summons 2002 The King of Torts 2003 Bleachers 2003 The Last Juror 2004 The Broker 2005 Playing for Pizza 2007 The Appeal 2008 The Associate 2009 The Confession 2010 The Litigators 2011 Calico Joe 2012 The Racketeer 2012 Gray Mountain 2014 The Rooster Bar 2017 The Reckoning 2018 The Guardians 2019 Sooley 2021 The Boys from Biloxi 2022 Young adult novels Edit Theodore Boone series Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer 2010 Theodore Boone The Abduction 2011 Theodore Boone The Accused 2012 Theodore Boone The Activist 2013 Theodore Boone The Fugitive 2015 Theodore Boone The Scandal 2016 Theodore Boone The Accomplice 2019 Short stories Edit Collections Ford County 2009 collection of seven short stories Blood Drive Fetching Raymond Fish Files Casino Michael s Room Quiet Haven Funny Boy Uncollected short stories The Tumor 2016 Partners 2016 0 5 Rogue Lawyer series Witness to a Trial 2016 0 5 The Whistler seriesAudiobooks Edit Bleachers Audible 2003 read by Grisham Ford County Stories Audible 2009 read by Grisham Non fiction Edit The Wavedancer Benefit A Tribute to Frank Muller 2002 with Pat Conroy Stephen King and Peter Straub The Innocent Man Murder and Injustice in a Small Town 2006 story of Ronald Ron Keith Williamson Don t Quit Your Day Job Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs they Quit 2010 with various authorsAdaptations EditFeature films Edit The Firm 1993 64 The Pelican Brief 1993 64 The Client 1994 64 A Time to Kill 1996 64 The Chamber 1996 64 The Rainmaker 1997 64 The Gingerbread Man 1998 Runaway Jury 2003 64 Mickey 2004 Christmas with the Kranks 2004 64 Television Edit The Client 1995 1996 1 season 20 episodes A Painted House 2003 television film The Street Lawyer 2003 TV pilot The Firm 2011 2012 1 season 22 episodes The Innocent Man 2018 miniseries 6 episodesSee also EditList of bestselling novels in the United StatesReferences Edit a b c d e f g h John Grisham Master of the Legal Thriller Interview American Academy of Achievement June 2 1995 Retrieved June 22 2022 Monitor Entertainment Weekly No 1245 February 8 2013 p 22 John Grisham Academy of Achievement Retrieved 1 October 2020 John Grisham Wins Galaxy Award Writers Write March 29 2007 Retrieved June 22 2022 Motoko Rich July 22 2007 Record First Day Sales for Last Harry Potter Book The New York Times Retrieved October 14 2018 a b c d e f g h i John Grisham 1955 The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture Retrieved June 22 2022 About The Firm NBC com Retrieved January 22 2012 a b John Grisham by Mark Flanagan About com retrieved December 9 2011 a b c d John Grisham biography jgrisham com retrieved December 9 2011 Grisham John September 6 2010 Opinion Boxers Briefs and Books The New York Times a b Grisham John September 6 2010 Boxers Briefs and Books The New York Times Retrieved November 2 2017 Norton Will Jr October 3 1994 CONVERSATIONS Why John Grisham Teaches Sunday School Christianity Today Vol 38 No 11 Miller Erin Collazo Biography of John Grisham Bestsellers about com February 8 1955 retrieved 2011 12 09 Nash amp Taggart 2009 p 161 Mississippi Official and Statistical Register Mississippi Secretary of State 1989 p 162 Nash amp Taggart 2009 pp 194 195 Bestseller Books of the 1990s About com Retrieved December 1 2007 The Firm at Box Office Mojo The Pelican Brief 1993 Box Office Mojo Retrieved August 9 2020 John Grisham Daily Variety 61st anniversary ed January 12 1995 p 12 Mickey 2004 IMDb retrieved 2019 12 31 Peggy V Helmerich Distinguished Author Award Tulsa City County Library Retrieved February 2 2018 a b Middleton Christopher May 28 2010 Exclusive best selling author John Grisham explains why he s courting children with his latest legal thriller The Telegraph London Archived from the original on 2022 01 11 Retrieved July 16 2012 Rose Charlie October 13 2006 An hour with author John Grisham Charlie Rose Show Archived from the original on January 27 2013 Best Sellers Books The New York Times November 13 2011 Hardcover Fiction Books Best Sellers Books The New York Times November 11 2012 Best Selling Books Week Ended Oct 28 The Wall Street Journal November 3 2012 Retrieved June 22 2022 Best Selling Books Week Ended Jan 1 The Wall Street Journal January 7 2012 Retrieved June 22 2022 Best Selling Books Week Ended Oct 30 The Wall Street Journal November 5 2011 Retrieved June 22 2022 Sycamore Row holds top spot on U S best sellers list Reuters December 26 2013 Retrieved June 22 2022 Combined Print amp E Book Fiction Best Sellers Books The New York Times November 15 2015 Maslin Janet May 31 2017 Plot Twist John Grisham s New Thriller Is Positively Lawyerless The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved April 18 2018 O Neill John John Grisham pens another exciting legal drama with The Rooster Bar News Herald Sterling Heights Michigan Retrieved April 18 2018 Maslin Janet October 25 2017 John Grisham Prosecutes For Profit Law Schools in The Rooster Bar The New York Times Retrieved June 22 2022 Murray Jocelyn Top 10 Best Beaches on the Gulf Coast USA Tots and Travel Retrieved January 14 2016 Gibson Dale July 7 2008 John Grisham and wife buy home in Chapel Hill Triangle Business Journal Retrieved September 16 2009 Novelist John Grisham Says Church Politicking Hurts Baptist Image Archived 2019 09 24 at the Wayback Machine Americans United for Separation of Church and State Diamond Solitarie The Baltimore Sun May 1 2000 Retrieved November 2 2017 Take Me Out to the Ballpark Mississippi State University University Libraries Mississippi State University Retrieved December 31 2019 The Night In Sports Feb 9 Sports Illustrated Viera Mark June 5 2010 Virginia Baseball Team Back in Business The New York Times Viera Mark June 5 2010 Virginia Baseball Team Back in Business The New York Times Retrieved December 31 2017 About Us Board of Directors The Innocence Project Archived from the original on February 17 2007 Retrieved June 16 2014 Innocence Blog John Grisham Calls for Forensic Improvement Innocenceproject org December 8 2011 Archived from the original on March 10 2012 Retrieved June 16 2014 Innocence Blog John Grisham discusses wrongful convictions tonight on Dateline NBC Innocence Project May 22 2007 Archived from the original on July 6 2010 Retrieved June 16 2014 Bill Moyers Journal PBS Retrieved June 16 2014 Grisham John August 10 2013 After Guantanamo Another Injustice The New York Times Woolf Hannah September 18 2006 Author John Grisham Finds Troubled Story Behind Innocent Man University of Virginia School of Law Archived from the original on March 12 2016 Retrieved February 21 2016 Pusey Allen September 23 2011 John Grisham on Grappling with Race the Death Penalty and Lawyers Polluting Their Own Profession ABA Journal Crawford Melanie L A Losing Battle With The Machinery Of Death The Flaws Of Virginia s Death Penalty Laws And Clemency Process Highlighted By The Fate Of Teresa Lewis Widener Law Review 18 1 2012 pp 71 98 Academic Search Complete John Grisham September 12 2010 Why is Teresa Lewis on Death Row The Washington Post pg B 5 Foster Peter October 15 2014 John Grisham men who watch child porn are not all paedophiles The Telegraph Archived from the original on 2022 01 11 Retrieved October 20 2014 Robehmed Natalie Millionaire Author John Grisham Says Not All Men Who Watch Child Porn Are Pedophiles Forbes John Grisham apologizes for child pornography comments CBS News The John Grisham Room Mississippi State University Libraries library msstate edu John Grisham Room now open in library Mississippi State University Retrieved December 1 2007 John Grisham Morgan Freeman others call for change to Mississippi flag CNN August 15 2015 Retrieved September 7 2015 John Grisham Why Mississippi Will Pull Down the Confederate Flag Time magazine August 16 2015 Retrieved September 11 2015 John Grisham on President Trump These are the easy days BBC News Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement The Arts American Academy of Achievement Retrieved June 22 2022 Pusey Allen July 28 2011 John Grisham Wins First Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction ABA Journal Retrieved June 22 2022 Archive 2014 Alabama Law The University of Alabama Retrieved November 2 2017 John Grisham books a b c d e f g h John Grisham Movies Archived 2016 04 09 at the Wayback Machine Jgrisham com Retrieved on December 9 2011 Works cited EditNash Jere Taggart Andy 2009 Mississippi Politics The Struggle for Power 1976 2008 second ed University Press of Mississippi ISBN 9781604733570 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Grisham Wikiquote has quotations related to John Grisham Official website John Grisham at IMDb Appearances on C SPAN InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse John Grisham TV Interview Donald E Wilkes Jr Archived 2011 07 18 at the Wayback Machine Kafka and Grisham in Oklahoma Flagpole Magazine February 7 2007 pg 9 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title John Grisham amp oldid 1131043704, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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