- Born
- Birth nameErika Mitchell
- E L James is an incurable romantic and a self-confessed fan girl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The result was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty Shades story from Christian's point of view. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 million copies worldwide.
E L James has been recognized as one of Time magazine's "Most Influential People in the World" and Publishers Weekly's "Person of the Year." Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on The New York Times Best Seller List for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Shades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS's The Great American Read (2018). Darker was long-listed for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award.
She was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third installment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People's Choice Award for Drama in 2018. E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and lives with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard, and their West Highland terriers in the leafy suburbs of West London.- IMDb Mini Biography By: E L James
- SpouseNiall Leonard(August 8, 1987 - present) (2 children)
- Erika is the author of the twilight fan fiction story Master of the Universe published on fanfiction.net and her own blog between 2009-2011. This story was penned under the name Snowsqueen's Icedragon. This story was later turned into the New York Times Bestselling trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, published in 2011 and 2012. This was penned under the name E L James.
- She did not start writing until she was 45 years old.
- Her book "Fifty Shades Of Grey" is the fastest selling paperback novel of all time.
- Born to a Chilean mother and Scottish father (a BBC cameraman), she is a former production executive turned author of romance novels.
- E L James admits "Fifty Shades of Grey" was a sublimation of her midlife crisis.
- [on 'Fifty Shades of Grey' ] I wrote the books really just to entertain myself. The fact that they've entertained a whole lot of other people is just thrilling. My only ambition when I published this was to see it one day in a book-shop. So everything has been, like, 'Holy crap!'
- I really like clever men who challenge you.
- I came up with a story and I wrote it.
- Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doing all of this, all of the time, it'd be nice for someone else to be in charge for a bit maybe.
- I'm not a great writer.
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