

His book “Conversations with the Enemy,” which followed a Marine during the Vietnam War, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction in 1984. Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, as well as several acclaimed novels and histories, died Thursday at the age of 77. It was written to chronicle Forrest's life throughout the 1980s.

It is the sequel to his 1986 novel Forrest Gump and the Academy Award-winning 1994 film of the same name starring Tom Hanks. Groom wrote Forrest Gump in 1986, and the novel about an amiable slow-witted Southern man who achieved success and adventure sold a respectable 40, 000 copies. (alternatively titled Forrest Gump and Co.) is a 1995 novel by Winston Groom.
WINSTON GROOM AUTHOR MOVIE
In addition to his work with “Forrest Gump,” Groom also wrote nonfiction works on various subjects, including on the American Civil War. The name of Winston Groom will forever be associated with the award-winning movie Forrest Gump. Our hearts & prayers are extended to his family,” she wrote. “While he will be remembered for creating Forrest Gump, Winston Groom was a talented journalist & noted author of American history. In 1995, Groom published a sequel titled “Gump and Co.”Īlabama Governor Kay Ivey tweeted about Groom’s death on Thursday, calling him one of the state’s “most gifted writers.”

The novel was turned into the 1994 film starring Tom Hanks and won six Academy Awards. Groom, the journalist-novelist-historian who died on Thursday at age 77, was a tall man with a very big personality. After he returned stateside, Groom was a reporter for the Washington Star before he focused on writing novels, according to the university. Gump’s creator, Winston Groom, certainly could say the same. Groom graduated from the University of Alabama in 1965 and then served four years in the US Army, including a tour in the Vietnam War. “I don’t have any details right now, but he did die (Wednesday) night,” Wilson said. Karin Wilson, mayor of his hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, told CNN that Groom’s family shared the news of the death with her office. He is survived by his wife, Susan.Winston Groom, the American novelist and author of “Forrest Gump,” has died.

He became a member of the Alabama Writers’ Hall of Fame 2018 class. When Groom received the prestigious Harper Lee Award in 2011. After moving to New York City, he completed his first novel, Better Times Than These, set in the Vietnam War and published in 1978. Groom later worked as a reporter for the Washington Star, but gave that up to devote himself to fiction. He graduated from the University of Alabama in with an English degree in 1965, and embarked on a tour of duty in Vietnam. Groom wrote Forrest Gump in six weeks.īorn March 23, 1944, in Washington, D.C., and raised in Mobile County, Alabama, Groom turned to writing in college. Groom said the novel was inspired by a story his father related about a neighbor’s child who displayed savant behavior. And that’s, I think, where I hooked ‘em.” Winston Groom, the writer whose novel Forrest Gump was made into a 1994 movie that won six Oscars and became a soaring pop cultural phenomenon, has died at his home in Fairhope, Ala. “If I could convince, persuasively, a reader that Coach Paul Bryant would take an idiot and put him on the football team, they’d believe anything.Once you hook your reader, they’ll go for the rest. In a 2014 interview with the Tuscaloosa News, Groom said the novel was “a farce, and that’s hard to do.
