Meet John Grisham at the 2009 National Book Festival in Washington, DC

John Grisham speaks!

John Grisham is an accomplished and entertaining speaker. What did he have to say?

I will answer that, but first I want to mention that my kids, Amy and Eliot, came with me to the festival. Amy is a wonderful photographer and the still shots you see are hers. And Eliot heard the first author to speak, John Grisham.

My son came with me to the event... and acted as my assistant.

According to Eliot, the presentation was conduction in two parts, first a reporter from The Washington Post interviewed Grisham on-stage; and then members of the audience asked questions. On the way home Eliot regaled us with the highlights. According to Grisham his first book bombed. The publisher printed 5,000 hardcover copies and never did a reprint.  Grisham was determined to find out what it took to be successful, so he read all the bestsellers. And he said to himself, “I can do that.” After that he wrote The Firm, which went on to be a bestseller. He does minimal research and keeps to his successful fiction format. His first foray into non-faction (I think it was Last Man Standing, about an innocent man on death row.) took him three years to write while his fiction takes about 6 months. So his is sticking to that which he does best.

One funny sidelight was when someone asked Grisham why he doesn’t include intimate sex scenes in his books. Without a thought he answered. First he said his wife is usually in the first row in the audience as she was today. And that when he was asked that question before, his wife chimed in from the first row that he writes about what he knows best.

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