John Ray Grisham Jr. is an American prolific and megaselling novelist, lawyer, and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives. According to the official web, Grisham is the author of forty-seven consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.
John Grisham is known for his popular legal thrillers. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989. Since that, Grisham has written one novel a year.
"I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial," says the novelist.
His first bestseller, the second book, The Firm (1991), sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series that continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel.
Now seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films. His recent novel, A Time for Mercy, is being developed by HBO as a limited series.
John Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
John Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker and a housewife. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right credentials for a professional career, he switched his focus and enrolled at Mississippi State University to major in accounting.
After graduating from Ole Miss Law School in 1981, he practiced law in Southaven for nearly a decade, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury trials. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1983 and served in it until 1990.
One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham heard the gruesome testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to write a novel about what would have happened if the girl's father had killed her abusers.
Getting up every day at five in the morning to have time to write a few hours before going to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987.
Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, which published it in a modest print run of 5,000 copies and published it in June 1988.
The day after Grisham finished A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a young lawyer who is lured into a seemingly perfect law firm that turns out to be nothing like it seemed.
After selling the film rights to his novel The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became popular with publishers, and Doubleday bought the rights to the book. After spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm was the bestselling novel of 1991.
The success of The Pelican Brief, which topped The New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as a master of the legal thriller.
John Grisham currently lives on a farm in central Virginia.
Photo credit: Twitter @JohnGrisham
