Biography of John Grisham  
John Grisham was born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker. He received an undergraduate degree in accounting from Mississippi State University in 1977 and then attended law school at the University of Mississippi, where he earned a law degree in 1981. In the same year as he graduated from lawschool he married Renee Jones who was to become Renee Grisham.  That same year, he married Renee Jones. He established a law practice in Southaven, where he practiced both criminal and civil law. In 1983, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, and in 1989 he published his first novel, “A Time to Kill”.

Since first publishing A TIME TO KILL in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are THE CHAMBER, THE RAINMAKER, THE RUNAWAY JURY, THE PARTNER, and THE STREET LAWYER), and all of them have become bestsellers, leading Publishers Weekly to declare him "the bestselling novelist of the 90s" in a January 1998 profile. There are currently over 60 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29 languages. Six of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, and The Chamber), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man.

Now Grisham has gone on to be recognized as one of the world's bestselling novelists. In addition to A Time to Kill and The Firm, his titles include The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, and The Rainmaker, each of which has been scripted into immensely successful film versions. His most recent novels are The Partner (1997), The Street Lawyer (1998), and The Testament (1999).

When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including taking mission trips with his church group. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.

Grisham lives with his wife of 16 years, Renee, and their two children, Ty, 13, and Shea, 11. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a 67 acre farm in Mississippi and a 204 acre plantation near Charlottesville, VA.