John Grisham Essay, Research Paper

John Grisham was born on February 8 1995 in the town of Jonesboro,

Arkansas. His father was an emigrant construction worker so the family

moved a lot. In 1967 they came to Southhaven, a little town outside

Memphis. John got an undergraduate degree in accounting at the

Mississippi State University and after that he went to Lawschool at OLE

Miss and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1981. After

his graduation he returned to Southhaven to work as a lawyer. He got

himself a small office where he practiced criminal law. John was also

politically engaged and in 1983 he won the election the Mississippi

House of Representatives. He now started to work on his first book, “A

Time to Kill” which he later finished in 1987. This book was based on

his own experience as a small-town lawyer but it wasn t a hit (it is

today). John Grisham continued to practice law and he also started

writing his second book, “The Firm,.” His luck changed one day in 1990

when Paramount Pictures paid him $600,000 for the rights to his new

book and this happened even before a publisher accepted it. The Firm

was published in 1991 and stayed on the best-sellers lists for nearly a

year. In 1992 his third book, The Pelican Brief was published and it

became and enormous success. At the same time “A Time to Kill” was

republished and this time it became a best-selling book. In 1993 “The

Client” was published and “The Chamber” came the year after that. His

two most recent books are “The Runaway Jury” (1996) and “The Partner”

(1997). All of his books are or will be movies, five of them already

are (The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, A Time to Kill and The

Chamber). In 1990 he gave up his job as a lawyer and resigned his seat

in the state Legislature to write books. Today he lives in

Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife Renee and his two kids Ty and

Shea. Apart from writing books John also coaches his son s Little

League team. He also has a small farm in Oxford, Mississippi.