University of Mississippi

John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. Before becoming a writer, he was a successful lawyer and... politician. As of 2008, his books have sold over 250 million copies worldwide. John Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Southern Baptist parents of modest means. His father worked as a construction worker and a cotton farmer, while his mother was a homemaker. After relocating frequently, the family settled in 1967 in the town of Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi, where Grisham graduated from Southaven High School. He played quarterback for the school football team. Encouraged by his mother, the young Grisham was an avid reader who was especially influenced by the work of John Steinbeck, whose clarity he admired. In 1977, Grisham received a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Mississippi State University. He later tried out for the baseball team at Delta State University but was dismissed by the coach, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Dave "Boo" Ferriss.
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Elizabeth Spencer is an American writer. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She has written a total of nine novels,... seven collections of short stories, a memoir , and a play . Her novella The Light in the Piazza was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She is a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction. Born in Carrollton, Mississippi, Spencer was valedictorian of her graduating class at local J.Z. George High School. She earned her Bachelor of Arts at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi and her Master's Degree in Literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1943. Spencer taught at the junior college level for two years before accepting a job with the Nashville Tennessean, but she soon returned to teaching, this time at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In 1953 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and left Mississippi to live in Italy and pursue writing full time.
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