John Grisham

John Grisham was born on 8th February 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, United States. John’s full name is John Ray Grisham Jr. By nationality, he is an American. On May 8, 1981, he married Renee Jones. They have two kids together – Shea Grisham and Ty Grisham. John Grisham’s childhood was pretty good. But he and his family had to move around for a while because of the job opportunities for his dad until they settled in Mississippi. John studied at Northwest Mississippi Community College, University of Mississippi School of Law.

He practiced law for about a decade before he started to write. Although he ended up writing, he wished to be a professional baseball player at first. At the end of his second term at law school, he became the Vice Chairman of the Apportionment and Election Committee and a member of many other committees. John is known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written books in different genres like crime fiction, baseball, and football. He, who wanted to become a baseball player but became an author, serves small leagues in Mississippi.

He donates some of his annual income to different communities. He is a good friend of Stephen King Stephen King is a renowned American novelist, colu >> Read More... . Once, when Stephen King asked John where he gets his ideas to write his novels, John answered, “Reading newspapers, reading about courts, lawyers, firms, litigations every day. By taking a legal issue which fascinates everyone or browses about an issue out of habit and constantly searching, surfing net about law and weave a novel about it.” When he wrote his first book A Time to Kill in 1989, it got rejected by several publications.

At last, a man called Bill Thompson accepted the manuscript and published the book. He got 1000 copies of the book for himself. Since Mississippi is a small place, there were no good places for selling the books, so he had a word with his librarian and arranged a huge book party, after which he was left out with 882 copies of the book.

Later he went around 35 libraries with the help of his librarian and sold the rest of the copies. John wrote 1-2 novels a year. Some of his novels are A Time to Kill, The Firm, The King of Torts, The Testament, The Client, Rogue Lawyer and the most recent one The Whistler. The famous characters in his novels are Theodore Boone, who appears in the novels Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, Theodore Boone: The Abduction, Theodore Boone: The Accused and Theodore Boone: The Activist. Theodore is a clever lawyer.

Then come Abby Mc Deere and Mitch Mc Deere who appeared in the novel The Firm. Abby Mc Deere is the wife of Mitch Mc Deere. She is an elementary school teacher, who graduated from the Kentucky University. Mitch Mc Deere is a tax lawyer who graduated from Harvard and has a certified public accountant credential. John has also written a couple of short stories like Ford County, The Tumor, and Witness to a Trail. And non-fictional books like The Wavedancer Benefit: A tribute to Frank Muller, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town and so on.

Some of his books have been adapted into feature films and a few into T.V. shows. In 2005, John received Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award; in 2004, Galaxy British Life Time Achievement Award; in 2009, Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction; in 2011, The Inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for The Confession; and in 2014, Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for Sycamore Row.