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53-570: John Ray Grisham Jr. ( / ˈ ɡ r ɪ ʃ ə m / ; born February 8, 1955) is an American novelist, lawyer, and former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives , known for his best-selling legal thrillers . According to the American Academy of Achievement , Grisham has written 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J.   K. Rowling , Grisham

106-492: A J.D. degree. Grisham practiced law for about a decade and won election as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives , serving from 1983 to 1990. He challenged the incumbent after becoming embarrassed by Mississippi's national reputation and inspired by the passage of the Education Reform Act of 1982 . Grisham represented the 7th District, which included DeSoto County, Mississippi . By his second term in

159-650: A literalist understanding of the Bible , and endorses the American separation of church and state . In 1993, he created with his wife a foundation, entirely financed by his royalties, which contributes to Baptist missionaries in Brazil for the purchase of medicines and the construction of chapels, clinics and schools. He also participated in some missionary work in Brazil , under the First Baptist Church of Oxford. Grisham has

212-786: A $ 1.2 million donation to the Cavalier baseball team in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was used in the 2002 renovation of Davenport Field . His son Ty played college baseball for the University of Virginia . Grisham is a member of the board of directors of the Innocence Project , which campaigns to free and exonerate unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project contends that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of

265-636: A 47-acre (19 ha) site in Southaven, Mississippi . The site was donated by the W. E. Ross family. The post-modern 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 -story steel frame features a glass-and-steel tower that forms the atrium/commons. The building contains 28 classrooms, four computer labs, a practical nursing lab, and two science labs. DeSoto County is also the home of the Olive Branch, Mississippi career-technical campus, established in 1985. The Lafayette-Yalobusha Technical Center at Oxford, Mississippi , open in 1983, offers

318-516: A book, and his favorite author is John le Carré . In 2011 and 2012, his novels The Litigators and The Racketeer claimed the top spot in The New York Times best seller list. The novels were among the best selling books of those years, spending several weeks atop various best seller lists. In 2013, he again reached the top five in the US best-seller list . In November 2015, his novel Rogue Lawyer

371-446: A degree. Although he started there as an economics major, he eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science in accounting after being inspired by a fellow student, a Vietnam veteran, who planned to go to law school. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law intending to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with

424-521: A fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball . Since moving to the Charlottesville area, Grisham has become a supporter of Virginia Cavaliers athletics and is regularly seen sitting courtside at basketball games. Grisham also contributed to

477-436: A former friend from law school who was caught in a sting thinking he was looking at adult porn but it was in reality sixteen- and seventeen-year-old minors and went on to add, "I have no sympathy for real pedophiles. God, please lock those people up. Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure ... Should be punished to the fullest extent of the law." The Mississippi State University Libraries , Manuscript Division, maintains

530-788: A home in Destin, Florida , and a condominium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina . Their former and longtime Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi , was given to the University of Mississippi after 2011. Grisham owns a beachfront home on Amelia Island in Florida. Grisham is a member of the University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia , itself a constituent of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship . Grisham opposes

583-399: A lifelong passion for baseball , demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi , and in Charlottesville . In 1996, Grisham built a $ 3.8 million youth baseball complex. In A Painted House , a novel with strong autobiographical elements, the protagonist, a seven-year-old farmer boy, manifests a strong wish to become a baseball player. He remains

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636-439: A place where he felt at home, noting, "I loved the big lecture halls, and I came to enjoy the professors. For the first time, after being at several schools, I was on a real campus with a diverse student body, different professors from around the world, big time sports, all of the activities that a big college can bring, and I really fell in love with State." A complete listing of works by John Grisham: † Denotes novels not in

689-445: A record $ 6 million for the rights to A Time to Kill , with Grisham asking for a guarantee that Joel Schumacher , the director of The Client , would direct. Beginning with A Painted House , Grisham broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South but continued to write legal thrillers at the rate of one per year. In 2002 he once again claimed the number one book of the year with The Summons . In 2003 and 2004 he missed

742-574: A science lab with internet capable lab stations for viewing dissections. The center also uses Dynamic Human software for health education. Northwest offers classes to prepare students for further academic achievement or for career advancement. Northwest has an "open door" policy for admissions. The Registrar's Office requires that potential students complete the following steps: There are over 30 student organizations that offer diverse experiences and provide opportunities to compete for awards and scholarships. Leisure activities include pep rallies, cookouts,

795-535: A workout center, swimming, dancing, and free movies and concerts. Student publications The newspaper, the award-winning Ranger Rocket , was the first Mississippi junior college newspaper. Students create the Rocketeer yearbook with guidance from faculty. Students are encouraged to contribute to the student literary publication, the Northwest Review , which is published each spring. Northwest athletic teams are

848-519: A “buoyant, mischievous thriller” in The New York Times . Several of Grisham's legal thrillers are set in the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi, in the equally fictional Ford County, a northwest Mississippi town still deeply divided by racism. The first novel set in Clanton was A Time to Kill . Other stories set there include The Last Juror , The Summons , The Chamber , The Reckoning , A Time for Mercy and Sycamore Row . The stories in

901-412: Is "locking up far too many people". Citing examples including "black teenagers on minor drugs charges" to "those who had viewed child porn online", he controversially added that he believed not all viewers of child pornography are necessarily pedophiles. After hearing from numerous people against this position, he later recanted this statement in a Facebook post. He went on to clarify that he was defending

954-907: Is on a 247-acre (1.00 km ) main campus in Senatobia with satellite campuses in Southaven and Oxford. The college is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award the Associate of Arts and Associate of Applied Science degrees along with professional career certificates. The Northwest campus has 43 buildings, many built or renovated in the last decade. Northwest's district covers Tate, Desoto, Marshall, Benton, Tunica, Panola, Lafayette, Yalobusha, Quitman, and Calhoun Counties in northwest Mississippi. Northwest began as Tate County Agricultural High School in 1915. The College began in 1928 with support from Tate and Quitman counties and

1007-401: Is one of only three anglophone authors to have sold two million copies on the first printing. Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practiced criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill ,

1060-471: The Clarion-Ledger urging that an inset within the flag of Mississippi containing a Confederate flag be removed. He co-authored the letter with author Greg Iles ; the pair contacted various public figures from Mississippi for support. Grisham supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016. In his 2018 Fall Convocation address to new students, Grisham described Mississippi State University as

1113-479: The Mississippi Constitution specifies that the state legislature must meet for 125 days every four years and 90 days in other years. The Mississippi House of Representatives has the authority to determine rules of its own proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and expel a member with a two-thirds vote of its membership. Bills must undergo three readings in each house, unless two-thirds of

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1166-494: The Mississippi Junior College Commission . The first President was Porter Walker Berry . The school changed with the times. Depression era students were allowed to pay for room and board with produce, and World War II male students studied at an accelerated pace to join the war effort. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools gave accreditation to Northwest in 1953. Effective January 2, 1988,

1219-646: The Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia , Mississippi, where he hoped to launch his baseball career but was benched instead. He and two close friends, Bubba Logan and Parker Pickle, transferred to Delta State University in Cleveland where Grisham hoped to revive his baseball career as a walk on player, but he was cut from the team and he left school after one semester. Ultimately, Grisham changed colleges three times before completing

1272-488: The Tulsa Library Trust . In 2010, Grisham started writing a series of legal thrillers for children. They feature Theodore Boone , a 13-year-old who gives his classmates legal advice on a multitude of scenarios, ranging from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. He said, "I'm hoping primarily to entertain and interest kids, but at the same time I'm quietly hoping that

1325-441: The 122 electoral votes (one per district) and more than 50% of the popular vote. This occurred only once, in 1999 , when Ronnie Musgrove had the most votes statewide, but was one electoral vote and 2936 votes (0.38%) shy of a majority: Musgrove was elected on the first ballot. The permanent position of Speaker pro tempore was established in a House vote on January 9, 1987. (It had been previously used in temporary situations if

1378-530: The 2023 elections. Republicans secured a majority for the fourth time since 2011, the first year when Republicans won the majority of seats in the State House since 1870. The 2023 elections were marked by new leadership, as the past speaker Phillip Gunn retired, allowing his chief lieutenant, then-Speaker Pro Tempore Jason White to become the new speaker. The 2023 elections saw the seating of 25 new members. State representatives are elected every four years by

1431-525: The Innocence Project. Grisham has appeared on Dateline NBC , Bill Moyers Journal on PBS , and other programs. He wrote for The New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo . Grisham opposes capital punishment , a position very strongly manifested in the plot of The Confession . He believes that prison rates in the United States are excessive, and the justice system

1484-526: The John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials generated during the author's tenure as Mississippi State Representative and relating to his writings. In 2012, the Law Library at the University of Mississippi School of Law was renamed in his honor. It had been named for more than a decade after the late Senator James Eastland . In 2015, Grisham, along with about 60 others, signed a letter published in

1537-513: The Registrar, Admissions, Financial Aid, and Recruiting offices. The James P. McCormick Administration Building, site of the original primary building for the old Tate County Agricultural High School, holds the administrative offices of the president, other officers, and the Business Office. The McCormick Building was named a Mississippi Landmark in 1993. The DeSoto Center campus is situated on

1590-644: The Speaker was not available.) The Speaker Pro Tempore acts as Speaker in the Speaker's absence. The Speaker Pro Tempore also serves ex officio as the Chair of the House Management Committee and as a member of the House Rules Committee. The current Speaker pro tempore is Republican Manly Barton. State representatives earn $ 23,500 per year. The following composition reflects the balance of power after

1643-532: The U.S. state of Mississippi . According to the state constitution of 1890, it is to comprise no more than 122 members elected for four-year terms. To qualify as a member of the House candidates must be at least 21 years old, a resident of Mississippi for at least four years, and a resident in the district for at least two years. Elections are held the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Article 4, Section 36 of

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1696-410: The age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm. Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college. He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House . Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $ 1.00 an hour. He

1749-404: The biggest verdict of his career." Although he failed English in community college, Grisham received praise for his writing while taking a business correspondence course during law school. Grisham said a case that inspired his first novel came in 1984, but it was not his case. He heard a 12-year-old girl telling a jury what had happened to her. Her story intrigued Grisham. He saw how the members of

1802-651: The books will inform them, in a subtle way, about law." He also stated that it was his daughter, Shea, who inspired him to write the Theodore Boone series. "My daughter Shea is a teacher in North Carolina and when she got her fifth grade students to read the book, three or four of them came up afterwards and said they'd like to go into the legal profession." In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write

1855-658: The collection Ford County are also set in and around Clanton. Other Grisham novels have non-fictional Southern settings, for example The Partner , The Runaway Jury , and The Boys from Biloxi are set in Biloxi , and large portions of The Pelican Brief in New Orleans . A Painted House is set in and around the town of Black Oak, Arkansas, where Grisham spent some of his childhood. Grisham married Renee Jones on May 8, 1981. The couple have two children. The family splits their time among their home in Charlottesville, Virginia,

1908-532: The house dispenses with the rules. They cannot be amended to a new purpose. Amendments to bills must be approved by both houses. The governor has the power to veto legislation, but legislators can override the veto with a two-thirds decision. From 1890 to 2020, State representatives were authorized under the Mississippi Constitution to elect the Governor of Mississippi if no candidate had received 62 of

1961-469: The institution changed its name from Northwest Mississippi Junior College to Northwest Mississippi Community College. The college serves an eleven county district and gradually expanded its offerings. Today, Internet classes, noncredit classes, and non-traditional offerings for adults round out the modern campus. The main campus sits on 247 acres (1.00 km ) in Senatobia, Mississippi . Yalobusha Hall, renovated in 2000, holds several offices, including

2014-476: The jury cried as she told them about having been raped and beaten. "I remember staring at the defendant and wishing I had a gun." It was then, Grisham later wrote in The New York Times , that a story was born. Over the next three years, he wrote his first book, A Time to Kill . The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000 copy printing. It

2067-470: The legal genre Jake Brigance series: Rogue Lawyer series: The Whistler series: Camino Island series: Mitch McDeere series: Stand-alones: Theodore Boone series: Collections: Uncollected short stories: Mississippi House of Representatives The Mississippi House of Representatives is the lower house of the Mississippi Legislature , the lawmaking body of

2120-411: The number one bestseller of the year due to the success of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown , but he once again produced two novels which ended the year in the top 5 . In 2004, The Last Juror ended the year at number four, and in 2005 he overtook The Da Vinci Code and returned to number one for the year with The Broker . The year 2006 marked the first time since 1990 that he did not have one of

2173-428: The perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a sales clerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it, deciding instead to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer. Grisham attended

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2226-879: The qualified electors of the district for which they are running. Candidates are required to be at least 21 years of age and a resident of the state and district for which they are campaigning. The House has elected a speaker 63 times since 1817: – February 8, 1818 – February 1819 – February 12, 1820 – February 12, 1821 – June 30, 1822 – January 21, 1823 – January 23, 1824 – February 4, 1825 – January 31, 1826 – February 8, 1827 – February 16, 1828 – January 2, 1894 – February 10, 1894 – February 11, 1898 – March 5, 1902 – March 1918 – December 20, 1991 – May 18, 2007 – April 5, 2015 – April 2, 2023 – Northwest Mississippi Community College One of fifteen state community and junior colleges in Mississippi, Northwest

2279-485: The second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas , to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham. His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi , near Memphis, Tennessee . As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player. As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe , Grisham gave up playing baseball at

2332-731: The state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees. He supported Representative Ed Perry's unsuccessful bid for the House speakership in 1987. With a different speaker elected at the beginning of the 1988 legislative session, Grisham was out of favor with the new legislative leaders and assigned to more minor committee roles. Not as busy with political affairs, he devoted more time to his novel, The Firm . Grisham later reflected that if Perry had become speaker he might have been given more committee responsibilities and thus unable to write. Grisham's writing career blossomed with

2385-399: The success of his second book, The Firm , and he gave up practicing law, except for returning briefly in 1996 to represent the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job. His official website states: "He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $ 683,500 —

2438-460: The top-selling books of the year, but he returned to number two in 2007, number one in 2008, and number two in 2009. Grisham has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey , which starred Harry Connick Jr. In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award , which is presented annually by

2491-471: The works of John Steinbeck in particular. Through one of his father's contacts, Grisham managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew, causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained

2544-576: The year with The Pelican Brief and The Client , and from 1994 to 2000 he had the number one bestselling book every year. In 2001 Grisham did not have the bestselling book of the year, but had both the second and third books on the list with Skipping Christmas and A Painted House . In 1992, The Firm was made into a film starring Tom Cruise and Ed Harris and was released in June 1993, grossing $ 270 million. A feature film version of The Pelican Brief starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington

2597-554: Was at the top of the New York Times Fiction Best Seller for two weeks. In 2017, Grisham released two legal thrillers. Camino Island was published on June 6, 2017. The book appeared at the top of several best seller lists including USA Today , The Wall Street Journal , and The New York Times . The Rooster Bar , published on October 24, 2017, was called "his most original work yet", in The News Herald , and

2650-427: Was published in June 1988. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill , he began work on his second novel, The Firm . The Firm remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 47 weeks, and became the seventh bestselling novel of 1991 . This would begin a streak of having one of the top 10 best selling novels of the year for nearly the next two decades. In 1992 and 1993 he had the second-bestselling book of

2703-619: Was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. It was later adapted into the 1996 feature film of the same name . Grisham's first bestseller , The Firm , sold more than seven million copies, and was also 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. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber , The Client , A Painted House , The Pelican Brief , The Rainmaker , The Runaway Jury , and Skipping Christmas . Grisham,

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2756-426: Was released later that year and grossed $ 195 million. Following their success, Regency Enterprises paid Grisham $ 2.25 million for the rights to The Client which was released in 1994 starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones . Universal Pictures then commissioned Grisham with the highest amount ever for an unpublished novel, paying $ 3.75 million for the rights to The Chamber . In August 1994, New Regency paid

2809-581: Was soon promoted to a fence crew for $ 1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work". Initially, Grisham attended Horn Lake High School, a school that was so overcrowded some classes met in a church or a gymnasium. In 1971, he transferred to Southaven High School , where he played football, basketball, and baseball. He credits his 12th grade English teacher, Frances McGuffey, for inspiring his love for reading and for introducing him to

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