Thomas Harris

Thomas Harris, born William Thomas Harris III on September 22, 1940, is an American novelist best known for his Hannibal Lecter series. His books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide, with The Silence of the Lambs alone moving 10 million copies by 2019. That novel was adapted into a film that became only the third in history to win Oscars in all five major categories.

Biography

Harris grew up in Jackson, Tennessee, and later Rich, Mississippi. A quiet, bookish child who came into his own in high school, he studied English at Baylor University, graduating in 1964. While there, he worked as a police-beat reporter for the Waco Tribune-Herald. In 1968, he moved to New York City to work for the Associated Press, leaving in 1974 to write his first novel, Black Sunday.

Reception

Critics praised The Silence of the Lambs, which won several genre awards. Stephen King highly praised its follow-up, Hannibal, though John Lanchester noted a "sense of discontinuity." Novelist John Dunning called Harris "a talent of the first rank." In 2019, Harris described his writing process as sometimes passive: "Some days you go to your office and you're the only one who shows up... some days everybody shows up ready to work." He received a Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.

Personal life

Harris shuns publicity, giving few interviews between 1976 and 2019. He married fellow Baylor student Harriet Anne Haley in June 1961; they had a daughter, Elizabeth Anne, and divorced in August 1968. He remained close to his mother, Polly, calling her nightly to discuss scenes from his novels until her death on December 31, 2011. As of 1991, he lived in South Florida with a summer home in Sag Harbor, New York.

His partner since at least 1999 is Pace Barnes, a publishing professional described as outgoing. Friend and agent Morton Janklow called Harris "wonderfully jovial," a passionate chef with Southern courtliness. In his first major interview in 43 years (with The New York Times in 2019, promoting Cari Mora), Harris revealed he is a nature lover and longtime volunteer at the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station in Miami—staff unaware of his fame until a few years prior. He called fame "more of a nuisance than anything else."

His works include Black Sunday (1975), Cari Mora (2019), and the Hannibal Lecter novels: Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs (1988), Hannibal (1999), and the prequel Hannibal Rising (2006). He also wrote the screenplay for the 2007 film adaptation of Hannibal Rising.