Dan Hakim y Julieta Diab John Grisham. Dan Hakim y Julieta Diab

He is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. His books have been translated into forty-two languages. He practiced criminal law for about a decade. He began writing his first novel, A Time to Kill, in 1984, and it was published in June 1989. As from 2012, his books have sold over 275 million copies worldwide. A Galaxy British Book Awards winner, Grisham is one of only three authors to sell 2 million copies on a first printing.

Grisham took three years to complete his first boo: “A Time to Kill” Grisham took three years to complete his first boo: “A Time to Kill” . Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.

In 2010, Grisham started writing a series of legal thrillers for children between 9 and 12 years old. It featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old kid who gives his classmates legal advice 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 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."

Since first publishing “A Time to Kill” in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently over 275 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November 2009) was his first short story collection.

When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 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.

Video interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8S7C-hdKR4