John Grisham – Trial Lawyer turned Author

John Grisham Jr is an author of legal thrillers; the first published in 1989 – A Time to Kill. His books have sold 300 million copies worldwide and he has produced 47 consecutive number one fiction bestsellers according to the American Academy of Achievement. This has set him alongside J. K. Rowling and Tom Clancy to be the only authors to have sold two million copies on the first print of a book.

Where did John Grisham grow up?

John Grisham was one of five children. He was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas. His mother, Wanda, was a homemaker and his father, John Ray Grisham, was a construction worker and cotton farmer. He was four years of age when his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi where he later became a lawyer and member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives.

When did John Grisham decide to study law?

As a child, he was interested in becoming a baseball player but gave that up at age 18 after a close miss from a pitcher. His mother always encouraged his reading and preparation for college. He worked many low-income jobs from the age of 16 but his decision to become a lawyer came to be while working on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi. While working he experienced a fight with gunfire and was immediately driven to think about college after the fight was apprehended by police. On the drive home, he made his decision to be a tax lawyer.

He was halfway through college at the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia when he changed his direction to becoming a trial lawyer. He left college and attended Delta State University in Cleveland and changed college two more times before attending Mississippi State University. He graduated in 1977 with a B. S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law and graduated in 1981 with a Juris Doctor degree.

What influenced John Grisham to become an author?

John Grisham once said the case that inspired his first novel came about in 1984. He heard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury what had happened to her which intrigued him. He saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and beaten He wrote A Time to Kill over the next three years but it was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press agreed to give him 5000 copies.

The day after the publication, John Grisham began his second novel The Firm which remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 47 weeks. This began his streak of top 10 novels for the next decade in which he wrote many books including: