J.K. Rowling

Background

Due to the success of the “Harry Potter” series, J.K. Rowling has become one of the most popular authors in the last decade. Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born on July 31, 1965, in Yate, England. She was born and raised in Chepstow, Gwent. She knew she wanted to be a writer since she was six years old, and her first book was about a rabbit. Rowling attended the University of Exeter and majored in French and classics. She worked as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in London after graduating from university.

In 1990, while waiting for a train from Manchester to London King’s Cross, Rowling had the idea for “Harry Potter.” During the next five years, she plotted out each book’s storyline and began writing “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” the first in the series, which was released by Bloomsbury in 1997. “Harry Potter” began to spread around the world when the book was translated into various languages, and Rowling soon received thousands of letters from fans. In addition, she wrote the companion volumes “Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them” in 2001, which were adapted into a film series between 2016 and 2018 with screenplays by Rowling. The profits from their sales went to charity. She later co-wrote a plot that inspired the play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which debuted in 2016 and went on to win an unprecedented nine Olivier Awards, including ‘Best New Play.’ In 2016, a book version of the script was released, billed as the eighth narrative in the “Harry Potter” series. The production was transported to Broadway two years later, and it won six Tony Awards in 2018, including the ‘Best New Play.’

In 2015, Rowling debuted in adult fiction with the television miniseries “The Casual Vacancy,” a contemporary social satire set in a small English town. The author wrote the crime thriller “The Cuckoo’s Calling” under the alias Robert Galbraith, which was disclosed in 2013. In 2017, a television series based on the books launched in the United Kingdom and in the United States the following year. Rowling began serializing “The Ickabog,” a new children’s novel, for free online in May 2020, and it was published in November. She defined the fairy tale as an investigation of “truth and the abuse of power,” although it had nothing to do with “Harry Potter.”

Rowling had a previous marriage that did not work out. On October 16, 1992, she married Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese television journalist. Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, their daughter, was born in Portugal on July 27, 1993. During her marriage, Rowling was subjected to domestic violence. Arantes kicked her out of the house on November 17, 1993, and the couple separated on November 17, 1993. On August 10, 1994, she filed for divorce, which was finalized in June 1995. Rowling married anesthetist, Dr. Neil Murray, on December 26, 2001, at the couple’s residence in Scotland. David (born in 2003) and Mackenzie (born in 2005) are their two children.