Mike Farris Author, Lawyer & More
TO JOIN AUTHOR ADVENTURE AS GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
I am very excited that Author Mike Farris will be writing a series of guest articles for the Author Adventure e-Newsletter to share Fiction and Script Writing Secrets with our readers.
MIKE FARRIS is a 1983 cum laude graduate of Texas Tech University School of Law, where he was an associate editor on the Texas Tech Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Now retired, Mike’s practice in Dallas included commercial litigation as well as entertainment law, focusing on the movie and publishing industries. He currently is a writer, a book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books, and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, teaching Constitutional Law and Entertainment Law.
Mike was lead counsel for the plaintiff in what has become known as the Fifty Shades of Grey lawsuit (Jennifer Lynn Pedroza v. Amanda M. Hayward and TWCS Operations Pty. Ltd. in the 153rd District Court in Tarrant County, Texas), involving publishing rights to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, one of the most successful book franchises in publishing history. The lawsuit resulted in a plaintiff’s judgment in excess of $13.2 million. Mike collaborated with his client on a book about the case, the award-winning Fifty Shades of Black & White: Anatomy of the Lawsuit behind a Publishing Phenomenon.
Mike has represented various university presses and successfully placed subsidiary rights to their published books, including negotiating the sale of movie rights to producers and Hollywood studios, such as The Free State of Jones, published by the University of North Carolina Press. The movie Free State of Jones starred Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and was directed by multi-time Oscar nominee Gary Ross.
Mike was the chair for 2017-2018 of the State Bar of Texas Entertainment and Sports Law Section, was past editor of the Section’s Entertainment and Sports Law Journal, and he was the 2014 Chair of the Dallas Bar’s Entertainment Art and Sports Law Section, after also having served as Chair in 2009 and 2012. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas in its Sports & Entertainment Management MBA program, where he served on the Sports & Entertainment Advisory Board.
A multi-time published author of both fiction and non-fiction, film rights to Mike’s true crime book A Death in the Islands: The Unwritten Law and the Last Trial of Clarence Darrow, have been optioned by Aaron Kandell and Jordan Kandell, screenwriters on the Disney hit Moana and screenwriters/co-producers of Adrift. He has also written a second true crime book from the Territory of Hawaii, Poor Innocent Lad: The Tragic Death of Gill Jamieson and the Execution of Myles Fukunaga.
Mike previously collaborated with rodeo cowboy-turned-actor/producer/director Robert Hinkle on Hinkle’s memoir of his years in show business, Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood, for the University of Oklahoma Press. He also collaborated to ghostwrite former ABC-TV anchorman Murphy Martin’s memoir of his years in journalism, entitled Front Row Seat: A Veteran Reporter Relives the Four Decades That Reshaped America.
In the world of fiction, he is the author of ten published novels: Isle of Broken Dreams, The Bequest, Wrongful Termination, Kanaka Blues, Manifest Intent, Rules of Privilege, Every Pig Got a Saturday, The Catch, Something Unfortunate, and Miles Apart.