John Grisham, born John ray Grisham Jr, is an American author and lawyer known for his popular thriller novels.

Grisham was also a former Mississippi House of Representatives seventh district member. According to the American Academy of Achievement, the author has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers.

His books have stated to have sold over 300 million copies worldwide. Along with fellow authors Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling, Grisham is one of the only three authors in history to have sold more than two million copies on a first printing. 

Before becoming an author, Grisham practiced criminal law for nearly a decade, from 1983 to 1990, after graduating from Mississippi State University and earning a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981.

Grisham published his first novel, A Time to Kill, a year before he ended his practice in June 1989. He had been writing the novel for four years. Perhaps his most remembered work, The Firm, was also his first bestseller, as it sold more than seven million copies.

Hollywood turned the book into a successful 1983 movie of the same name starring Tom Cruise.  More recently, in 2012, a television series set ten years after the events of the novel and movie continued the story.

Many more of his novels have been adapted into films, making him one of the most successful writers.

Quick Facts About John Grisham

Age:	67
Net Worth:	$400 Million
Profession:	Author
Nationality:	American
Spouse:	Renee Grisham
Children:	2
Date of Birth:	February 8, 1955
Place of Birth:	Jonesboro, Arkansas, U.S.
Alma Mater:	Mississippi State University, University of Mississippi
Genres:	Legal Thriller, Crime Fiction
Years Active:	1989 - Present

Who Is John Grisham's Wife, Renee Jones?

Renee Jones is the wife of popular American novelist John Grisham, and they have been wed since 1981.

Grisham married Renee Jones soon after graduating from law school and passing the bar test in 1981. In many interviews, he stated that Jones was a childhood friend from Southaven and that they had been dating a year before getting married on May 8, 1981.

After getting married, the pair moved back to Southaven so Grisham could practice law. Jones is four years younger than her husband and is 63 years old as of the writing of this article. Grisham and his wife have two children, Shea and Ty, but little is known about their personal lives.

The same can be said about the couple as even though Jones is never shy to appear in public, during certain events, to support her husband, she does not have much of a public profile and remains largely behind the scenes.

Her husband respects her stance and does not talk about her more than he has to with the public and the press.

John Grisham's Family Background

John Grisham has not been very forthright about his current family's information, which is understandable.

The author has been very open about his early life, the lives of his birth family, and the situations they grew up in. 

Grisham was the second of five children. He was born in Arkansas, in a town called Jonesboro, to his mother, Wanda Skidmore, and his father, John Ray Grisham. The author has revealed that his father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer while his mother was a homemaker.

Grisham's family moved from Arkansas when the boy was four years old and settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, which would become Grisham's beloved hometown.

The author wanted to be a baseball player as a child and has a lifelong love for the sport fostered from this childhood fancy. He even noted in the foreword of his 2012 book Calico Joe that Grisham gave the sport up at 18 when a pitcher narrowly missed young Grisham when he threw a beanball at him.

Though his parents lacked formal education, Grisham's mother regularly encouraged him to read and prepare for college. The author's parents were a great influence on him as well as support. He drew on the experiences from his childhood for his 2001 novel A Painted House.

Another of his teenage enterprises was working for a plant nursery. He would water bushes for a dollar an hour.

Soon enough, the job promoted the boy to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour, but Grisham soon realized that there was no future.

He joined work with a plumbing contractor at 16 but found that job miserable too.

The following year, he found work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi through one of his father's contacts.

However, an unfortunate incident made Grisham get serious about college- a gunfight broke out among the crew, which led Grisham to hide in the restroom for safety. Grisham stated that he did not come out until the police detained the perpetrators, hitchhiked home, and started thinking about college.

His college career was rife with changes as he first attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi, then the Delta State University in Cleveland, and finally Mississippi State University, where he graduated in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in accounting. 

While in college, he worked in retail as a sales clerk in a department store men's underwear section. He has since called the experience humiliating. 

After graduating, Grisham enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of law to become a tax lawyer. However, soon overcome by the complexity and lunacy of the job, his interests shifted to general civil litigation.

So, after graduating in 1981 with a Juris Doctor degree, Grisham moved to his hometown as a trial lawyer. He also participated in missionary work in Brazil under the First Baptist Church of Oxford after leaving law school.

How Much Is John Grisham's Net Worth?

John Grisham is an American author who has a net worth of $400 million as of 2022.

The author is stated to make $50 - $80 million per year in book/movie royalties. He is known to be among the top 10 richest authors in the world, floating just at the edge of the list.

However, the author wasn't always this popular and prestigious, especially not when he was practicing law for about a decade. His legal career was nothing like his writing career, as Grisham was very aggressive. 

The author won the election as a Democrat to the House of Representatives of Mississippi from 1983 to 1990. He challenged the incumbent after being embarrassed by Mississippi's national reputation.

The author has stated that he was inspired by the Education Reform Act of 1982.  Grisham represented the 7th district, and by the second term of his state legislature, the future author was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.

However, things started going downhill in 1987 after he supported Ed Perry's unsuccessful bid for the House speakership that year. 

With a new speaker appointed the next year, Grisham found himself out of favor with the new legislative leaders and assigned to increasingly minor commitment roles. 

But, now less busy with political affairs, the lawyer devoted more time to his writing.  In retrospect, Grisham has stated that had Perry become a speaker, he might have been given more committee responsibilities and thus become unable to write.

The author's writing career blossomed with the success of his second book, The Firm, and he soon gave up practicing law except for a brief return in 1996 to represent a deceased railroad worker's family.

John Grisham's Writing Career

American author John Grisham has stated he was inspired to write his first novel due to a case in 1984.

The case was not his. He'd heard a 12-year-old girl telling a jury about what had happened to her, and the story intrigued Grisham because he saw how the jury members cried at her descriptions. According to Grisham, he remembered staring at the defendant the whole time wishing he could do something. That thought was when his first novel, A Time to Kill, was born.

Twenty-eight publishers initially rejected the book before an unknown publisher, Wynwood Press, agreed to print a modest 5,000 copies, and the book was published in June 1988. Grisham began work on his second novel, The Firm, the day after he completed A Time to Kill.

The Firm would become Grisham's seminal and most remembered novel. After release, the book remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 47 weeks and became the seventh bestselling novel of 1991.

The Firm would begin Grisham's streak of having one of the top ten-selling novels of the year for nearly two decades. The next two years would see him winning the second bestselling book of the year with The Pelican Brief in 1992 and The Client in 1993.

From 1994 to 2000, Grisham had the number one bestselling book every year.

Though he didn't have the best-selling book of the year in 2001, Grisham did have both the second and third books on the best-selling list: Skipping Christmas and A Painted House. The author has also seen many of his books be adapted into successful movies, the first being The Firm in 1992.

The film starring Tom Cruise grossed over $270 million. The next of his books to be turned into a movie would be The Pelican Brief, starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, which grossed over $195 million. Following the success of these movies, Regency Enterprises paid the author $2.25 million for the rights to his book The Client, which became a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones.

However, the author made history when Universal Pictures paid him $3.75 million, the highest amount ever paid for an unpublished novel, for the rights to The Chamber. The money kept increasing as New Regency paid him a record $6 million in August 1994 for the rights to his first novel, A Time to Kill.

There was a caveat, though, as Grisham asked for a guarantee that Joel Schumacher, The Client's director, would direct the movie. As of the writing of this article, ten feature films, one television film, two television series, one miniseries, and a television pilot have been made from his books.

Some FAQs

Who is John Grisham married to?

He is married to Renee Grisham and they have been wed since 1981

How Many books has John Grisham released?

He has released over 20 books

How many children does John Grisham have?

He has two children named Shea and Ty

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