Grisham, John

American author, lawyer and former politician born in Jonesboro, Arkansas. His father was a construction worker who travelled around the southern United States with his family in search of work. They settled in Southaven, Mississippi, when John Grisham was four. They were stretched for money and Grisham began to take odd jobs as a teenager. He was encouraged by his mother to enrol at a college, and in 1977 he graduated with a degree in accounting from Mississippi State University. He then attended Mississippi School of Law where he trained as a tax lawyer, but he changed course and graduated in 1981 with a Juris Doctor degree. The same year he married his girlfriend Renée Jones. They have two children and live in Oxford, Mississippi and Charlottesville, Virginia.