John Grisham, the wildly successful author of “The Firm” and “A Time to Kill,” dreamed of being a baseball player from age six to age twenty. He loved the game of baseball and loved to play, but finally, when he was twenty years old, he had to admit to himself that he just didn’t have the talent to play the game, at least not professionally.
He was in college at the time, partying and having a lot of fun, when this realization hit him, and he decided he had better make something of his life. He studied accounting and planned to go into tax law.
After graduating Grisham went to work for a firm in his hometown of Southaven, Mississippi. However, he ended up doing mostly criminal and civil law rather than tax law, and spent a lot of time in the courtroom. It was here that he began writing, spending a couple of hours on it every morning before appearing in court. He had no desire to be a writer, and did not crave the money he could make as a successful author. He just had a story running around in his mind, and wanted to try and put it down on paper. The result was "A Time to Kill," his first novel.
Grisham has gone on to publish a bestselling novel every year for seven consecutive years, the only author to have ever accomplished such a feat. He is married and has two children, and they divide their time between a home in Mississippi and one in Virginia.
Along with his prolific writing, Grisham also served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 until 1990. He is a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign.
