Joanna Kathleen Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, England, on on July 31, 1965. She first starting writing when she was as young as 12 years old, and wrote many stories as a child and teenager growing up near Bristol. While living on welfare as a single mom with her daughter Jessica (who was still a baby at the time), Rowling spent hours in coffee shops writing the story of Harry Potter, which evetually made her an international literary sensation. The Harry Potter books reached out to fans all over the world, and when the 4th book of the installment Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released, it became the fastest selling book in history.

After graduating from Exeter university, Rowling moved to Portugal in 1990 to teach English, and there she met and married Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes. However, the marriage did not last long, and after giving birth to Jessica in 1993, the couple divorced and Rowling returned to Edinburgh to live with her sister Di. The story goes that Rowling came up with the idea of Harry Potter while on a travelling from Manchester to London. After coming back to England, Rowling spent hours a day working on the idea of "Harry Potter", and eventually laid out a huge plan for her 7 book series which tells the story of a young sorceror named Harry Potter. After several rejections, she eventually signed with Bloomsbury whom decided to take a chance on her and was on her way into being an international hit.

Part of her inspiration for writing Harry Potter, came from her childhood friend, Ian Potter. She said that some of the characters in the book, like Ron, Hermoine, and Professor Lockhart also related to real-life people she once knew. Ron was like a boy she used to know as a child, Hermoine was in a way like herself, and Lockhart related to someone who was always proud of whatever they took credit for. In the beginning, she wrote Harry Potter in a local café. During that time, she was a single mother and a teacher, working hard to support herself and daughter. The early plannings of the characters, names, etc., took at least 5 years, according to Rowling. When she writes one Harry Potter book, she writes the others at the same time! There are many details that she has to pay attention to and not forget. It's not an easy job. She writes many pages each day - Goblet of Fire is 734 pages, the longest book yet. She also said in an interview, that when she writes, the ideas either come flying out her hand and onto the paper, or sometimes she feels as if her "brain was bleeding", because sometimes her ideas may be slow, and she doodles on the paper from blank thought. Eventually all the work paid off, when she was awarded by the Scottish Arts Council, which entitled her to finish her book. Her tremendous accomplishments have earned her a British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, as well as.as the Smarties Prize.

On boxing day 2001, J.K. Rowling married anesthetist Dr. Neil Murray at their home in Scotland. Their son David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on Sunday afternoon at the New Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. Rowling has revealed that she was going to put her baby first, and spend less time promoting the 5th book of the Harry Potter series "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". She told Bloomsbury that will be no repeat of the massive hype that surrounded her last book, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, where she autographed up to 1400 books in one day.

Contact Information

J.K. Rowling
c/o Scholastic Inc.
555 Broadway
New York, NY 10012-3999

J. K. Rowling
c/o Bloomsbury Publishing
38 Soho Square
London
W1V 5DF
UK

 

 

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