Winston Groom

Winston Groom took the publishing world by storm when his 1986 novel Forrest Gump flew to the top of The New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 21 weeks. It has sold over 2.5 million copies in the United States alone on the heels of its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks. The book has also been reprinted in at least 13 countries.

The idea for the character of "Forrest Gump" came from Groom's father, who knew a man who was slow-witted but whose mother taught him to play the piano. This hit a nerve with Groom and over the following six weeks, he created the character of Gump. Groom believes that Gump shows that one does not have to be smart or rich to have dignity. The film grossed over $700 million, garnered six Academy Awards, and gave birth to numerous tie-in products.

In addition to Forrest Gump and Gump & Co., Groom's novels include Better Times Than These, the award-winning As Summers Die, which was made into a movie starring Bette Davis, Gone the Sun, and Only. He is also the co-author of Conversations with the Enemy, a non-fiction account of the experience of an American prisoner of war in Vietnam, brilliantly rendered and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novel, Such a Pretty, Pretty Girl, was published in 1999. He has also written The Crimson Tide, a pictorial history of football at the University of Alabama, which was published in 2000.

As well as being a talented novelist, Groom is also a serious student of history. One of his books, the prize-winning Shrouds of Glory is a meticulous, atmospheric history of the little known, but very dramatic, Western Campaign of the Civil War, inspired by tales of his great-grandfather who fought for the Confederate Army. A Storm in Flanders, his riveting World War I history, was published in the spring of 2002. Continuing on his historical writing path, in 2005 he published 1942: The Year that Tried Men’s Souls, then Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte at the Battle of New Orleans. Most recently, he has published Shiloh, 1812, an account of the Civil War battle.

Groom graduated from the University of Alabama, where he edited the campus humor magazine, The Mahout. Following college, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division from July 1966 to September 1967 when he was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He then spent the next eight years working as a reporter and columnist for The Washington Star before becoming a full-time author. He holds several honorary PhD degrees as a Doctor of Humane Letters. He has written for numerous magazines, including Vanity Fair, Southern Living, Conde Nast Traveler, Newsweek, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine and contributed editorial articles to The New York Times and The Washington Post.