John Grisham Biography, Career, Education, Law, Writing, Age, Height, and Net Worth.

Who Is John Grisham?

John Grisham (John Ray Grisham) is an American attorney, novelist, politician, and activist. He is well known for famous legal thrillers. John’s books have been translated into 42 languages and published globally.

Career

Law and Politics

When it comes to the law, he has practiced for more than 10 years. After that, he won the Mississippi House of Representatives elections as a Democrat. He served between 1984 and 1990 when he was earning a salary of $8,000. In addition, he has represented the seventh district which included DeSoto County.

During his second term as the Mississippi state legislator, he was the Vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Election Committee. Furthermore, he was a member of several other committees.

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According to his official website, he has cited that ” He was honoring a commitment made before he had gone for retirement from the law to become a full-time writer. He has successfully asked his clients’ case earning them a jury award of $683,500 which was the biggest verdict of his career”.

Writing Career

His writing career began in 1984, according to him a big case came but it was never his. As he was walking around the court he overheard a story of a 12-year-old girl narrating to the jury what had happened to her. The story made John start watching the trial and as he was following the trial. He saw how the jury cried as the young girl narrated how she was raped and beaten.

It was at that time that he wrote in The New York Times, that a story was born. He spent three years writing his first novel. The novel was titled A Time to Kill, wondering “what might have occurred if the girl’s father had slain her assailants.” It was tough to locate a publisher. Moreover, the book was declined by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an obscure press, decided to produce 5,000 copies. In June of 1989, it was released.

One day after completing A Time to Kill, he started writing his second book, entitled The Firm. His second novel, The Firm was in The New York best-selling for 47 weeks. In addition, it was the seventh best-selling book in 1991. As a result of this, it began a lane of having one of the top 10 selling novels of the year for nearly the next 20 years. Moreover, in 1992 and 1993, his book The Pelican Brief and The Client was the second bestselling book of the year.

Furthermore, from 1994 to 2000, he had the number one best-selling book consecutively. With Skipping Christmas and A Painted House, Grisham not only had the second and third best-selling books of the year in 2001, but he also had the second and third best-selling books of the year.

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Moreover, his book The Firm was made a film in 1992, where the starring Tom Cruise, and it was released in June 1993 and grossed $ 270milllion. After that, a film version of The Pelican Brief, which starred Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington was released in late 1993 and managed to gross $195 million. After their breakthrough, Regency Enterprises paid John $2.25 million for the rights to The Client, a 1994 film starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, and then Universal Pictures gave him $3.75 million for the rights to The Chamber, the biggest amount ever paid for an unpublished novel.

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How Old Is John Grisham?

He was born on February 8, 1955, and currently, he is 66 years old.

John Grisham Family

Who are His Parents?

He was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas as a second born to Wanda Skidmore and John Ray Grisham. His father was a construction manager and a cotton farmer while his mother was a homemaker.

Does John Have Siblings?

He has two siblings Kevin Grisham and Mark Grisham, however much is not known about them.

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John Grisham Education

He enrolled at the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia. After that, he attended Delta State University in Cleveland, by the time he was completing the degree he had changed college three times. Finally, he graduated from Mississippi State University in 1997, where he received a B.S degree in accounting.

John Grisham Wife

He is currently, married to Renee Jones, the two tied the knot on 8th May 1981.

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John Grisham Kids/ Children

The couple is blessed with two kids Shea and Ty. Ty played college baseball for the University of Virginia.

Legal Thrillers

Starting with A Painted House, he widened his concentration from law to the more general rural South. However, John continued to write legal thriller at the rate of one year. His book The Summons claimed No.1 as the book of the year in 2002. However, in 2003 he missed the No. 1 bestseller spot due to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. After that, he went ahead and produced two more novels that finished top 5 at the end of the year.

In 2004, The Last Juror came in fourth place, and in 2005, he surpassed The Da Vinci Code and returned to number one with The Broker. He did not have one of the best-selling novels of the year for the first time since 1990 in 2006, but he returned to number two in 2007, top one in 2008, and ranked second in 2009.

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In addition, he has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction. He wrote and produced the original screenplay for the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, which starred Harry Conbick Jr. Furthermore he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award was presented by the Tulsa Library Trust.

Legal Thriller for Youngster

Grisham began creating a series of legal thrillers for youngsters ages 9 to 12 years old in 2010. It stars Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old who provides his students legal advice on topics ranging from freeing impounded dogs to assisting their parents in avoiding foreclosure of their home. John stated that he was hoping to entertain kids and at the same time inform them about the subtle way of the law.

He went ahead and cited that it was his daughter, Shea who inspired him to write the Theodore Boone series. His daughter is a teacher in North Carolina and she got her fifth-grade students to read the book, and three or four came forward and said they’d like to go into the legal profession. Grisham revealed in an October 2006 interview with Charlie Rose that he generally takes six months to write a novel and that his favorite author is John le Carre.

His novel Litigators and The Racketeer claimed the top position on The New York bestseller list in 2011 and 2012 consecutively. The book spent several weeks at the top of the various bestseller list. In November 2015, he was again at the top of the New York Times Fiction Best Seller for two weeks. Grisham published two legal thrillers in 2017. On June 6, 2017, Camino Island was released. Several best-seller lists, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, placed the book at the top. The News-Herald named his most creative piece yet, The Rooster Bar, which was released on October 24, 2017.