Scott Turow
Scott F. Turow (born April 12, 1949) is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies. Movies have been based on several of his books.
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[edit] Life and career
Turow was born in Chicago, attended New Trier High School, and graduated from Amherst College in 1970. He received an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, where he attended from 1970 to 1972. In 1971, he married Annette Weisberg, a painter.
Scott Turow later became a Jones Lecturer at Stanford, serving until 1975, when he entered Harvard Law School. In 1977, Turow wrote One L, a book about his first year at law school. After earning his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1978, Turow became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, serving in that position until 1986. There he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases, including the tax fraud case of state Attorney General William Scott. Turow also was lead counsel in Operation Greylord, the federal prosecution of Illinois judicial corruption cases.
After leaving the U.S. Attorney's office, Turow became a novelist, writing legal thrillers such as The Burden of Proof, Presumed Innocent, Pleading Guilty, and Personal Injuries, which Time magazine named as the Best Fiction Novel of 1999. All four became bestsellers, and Turow won multiple literary awards, most notably the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers. Many of the characters appear in multiple books, and all of his novels take place in Kindle County. (The state is unspecified, but the county contains a tri-city conglomerate on the Mississippi between Chicago and New Orleans [Burden of Proof p. 52]; compare the "Quad Cities" on the Mississippi, originally Davenport IA, Rock Island IL, Moline IL, and East Moline IL, but now also including Bettendorf IA.) In 1990, Turow was featured on the June 11 cover of Time, which described him as "Bard of the Litigious Age".[1] In 1995, Canadian author Derek Lundy published a biography of Turow, entitled Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy (ECW Press, 1995). In the 1990s a British publisher bracketed Turow’s work with that of Margaret Atwood and John Irving, republished in the series Bloomsbury Modern Library.
Turow is the president of the Authors Guild.[2] He was also President from 1997 to 1998 and has served on its board.
From 1997 to 1998 Turow was a member of the U.S. Senate Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, which recommends federal judicial appointments.
Turow is a partner of the Chicago law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Turow works pro bono in most of his cases, including a 1995 case where he won the release of Alejandro Hernandez, who had spent 11 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. He was also appointed to the commission considering the reform of the Illinois death penalty by former Governor George Ryan and is currently a member of the Illinois State Police Merit Board. He and his wife Annette divorced in late 2008 with three grown children.
Turow gave the commencement speech at the 2011 Rutgers-Camden Law School where he proceeded to lecture on criminal law including his personal views on the death penalty and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
In 2011, Turow met with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig to discuss political reform including a possible Second Constitution of the United States; according to one source, Turow saw risks with having such a convention, but believed that it may be the "only alternative" given how campaign money has undermined the one-man-one-vote principle of democracy.[3]
[edit] Books
[edit] Fiction
- Presumed Innocent, 1987
- The Burden of Proof, 1990
- Pleading Guilty, 1993
- The Laws of Our Fathers, 1996
- Guilty As Charged, 1996 (as editor)
- Personal Injuries, 1999
- Reversible Errors, 2002
- Ordinary Heroes, 2005
- Limitations, 2006
- The Best American Mystery Stories, 2006 (as editor)
- Innocent, 2010 ISBN 978-0446562423
[edit] Non-fiction
[edit] Films
- Presumed Innocent, 1990
- The Burden of Proof, 1992
- Reversible Errors, 2004
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Burden of Success". TIME (Time Inc.) 135 (24). 1990-06-11. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970322,00.html. Retrieved 2009-03-29.
- ^ http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/scott-turow-elected-president-of-the-authors-guild/?src=busln
- ^ JAMES WARREN of The Chicago News Cooperative (December 10, 2011). "Let’s Do Something About Privilege, Donors, Corporations and the Constitution". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/us/lets-do-something-about-donors-and-the-constitution.html. Retrieved 2012-01-23.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- Scott Turow at the Internet Movie Database
- A reading from The Laws of Our Fathers by Scott Turow
- Interview on Ordinary Heroes at the Pritzker Military Library
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