J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling (Yate, July 31, 1965), who writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British writer, film producer and screenwriter, best known for being the author of the Harry Potter book series, that have exceeded five hundred million copies sold.

This literary success led to the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimating Rowling's fortune at £560 million, making her the 12th richest woman in the United Kingdom., Forbes ranked Rowling 40th on its list of the most powerful celebrities of 2007, and Time magazine selected her as "person of the year" that same year, highlighting the social, moral and political inspiration that he has given to the characters of Harry Potter.

Rowling is a well-known philanthropist who supports charities such as Comic Relief, One Parent Families and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain.

Name

Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, her real name is Joanne Rowling. Before publishing her first novel, Bloomsbury Press feared that younger readers would be reluctant to buy books written by a woman and asked her to use two initials and not her first name. Since she does not have a middle name, she chose the letter K as her middle initial in honor of her paternal grandmother Kathleen. The name Kathleen has never been a part of her real name. After her marriage, she often uses the name Joanne Murray when conducting business private. She calls herself Jo: "Nobody called me Joanne when I was a kid, unless they were mad at me."

Biography

Early Years

Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 in Yate, United Kingdom, the daughter of Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling, née Volant. Her sister Dianne, Di, was born in the family home on 18 June 1967 when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby town of Winterbourne when Rowling was 4 years old. He attended St Michael's Grammar School, an establishment founded by famed abolitionist William Wilberforce and activist Hannah More in 1813. Its first headmaster at St. Michael's, Alfred Dunn, is believed to have was the inspiration for the Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore.

As a child, Rowling enjoyed writing fantastic stories, which she often recounted to her sister.

I still remember when I told her a story in which she fell into a counselor and was fed with strawberries by the rabbit family that lived there [...] The first story I wrote in my life, when I was five or six, was about a rabbit named Rabbit. He had measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee.

J. K. Rowling

At the age of 9, Rowling moved to Tutshill, in Gloucestershire, England, near Chepstow, Wales. As a teenager, her great-aunt gave her an old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, who would later read all of her books.

He attended secondary school at Wyedean School. Sean Harris, his best friend from the Upper Sixth, owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which served as the inspiration for a car featured in one of his books.

Hermione is vaguely based on me. It is a caricature of myself when I was eleven, although I am not particularly proud of it [...] Ron Weasley is not a living portrait of Sean, but the truth is he looks a lot like it.

J. K. Rowling

Of her musical tastes at the time, Rowling said "My favorite band in the world is The Smiths. When I went through a more punk stage, it was The Clash."

Rowling is also passionate about the pop music of Siouxsie Sioux, whose spiky hair and black eye makeup look would inspire her appearance in later years, and her college debut. She failed the entrance exams for entering Oxford University in 1982, so he enrolled for a double degree in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, which he describes as "a bit surprising" because he "expected to be among lots of similar people who shared her radical thoughts" and, only when she made friends at university, did she begin to enjoy it. After a year of study in Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.

Early career

In June 1990, he traveled by train from Manchester to London, the train had problems and the journey was delayed four hours. During that event, she came up with the idea of a wizarding school."Suddenly, the idea of Harry just popped into my mind. I can't say why, or what triggered it, but I saw the idea of Harry and the wizarding school clearly. Suddenly, I had the main idea of a boy who didn't know who he was, who didn't know he was a magician until he received an invitation to attend magic school. I've never been so excited about an idea." "I don't know where the idea came from," she told the Boston Globe, "It started with Harry, and then all the characters and situations came out in my head." When she arrived at her Clapham Junction flat, she began writing immediately. That same year her mother died. It was a very hard blow for her, because he was the only person who supported her ideas of being a writer, after fighting multiple sclerosis for ten years. Rowling commented "I was writing Harry Potter in the when my mother passed away. I was never able to tell her about Harry Potter.” Rowling said her passing profoundly affected her work as a writer, and that she included many more details about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew how he felt.

Rowling later moved to Porto (Portugal) to work as an English teacher. While in Porto, she met and fell in love with Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist. Despite Jorge's infidelities, Joanne married him on October 16, 1992. Their daughter, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on July 27, 1993 in Portugal. and Jorge's alcoholism, Rowling abandoned him in November of the same year her daughter was born and moved with her to Edinburgh (Scotland), the city where her sister lived.

In March 1994, Rowling filed a restraining order – the Scottish equivalent of a restraining order – against Jorge Arantes, and obtained an interim order that would be renewed eight months later, already in November 1994. At that time, Rowling suffered from clinical depression and came to consider suicide, but her daughter Jessica gave her the strength to carry on. It was the suffering of her illness that would give her the idea of dementors, the soulless creatures that appear in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In August 1994, the writer formally filed for divorce.

Without a job and living on state benefits, Rowling completed her first novel writing in various cafes, especially the Nicolson, every time she managed to get Jessica to fall asleep. In an interview with the BBC in In 2001, Rowling denied the rumor that she wrote in nearby cafes to escape her unheated apartment, noting: "I'm not stupid enough to rent an unheated apartment in Edinburgh in the dead of winter. It had heating." Instead, she stated on the US television show A & E Biography that one of the reasons she wanted to write in cafes was because taking her baby for a walk was the best way to put the little girl to sleep.

Finally, in June 1995, the previously provisional injunction against Jorge Arantes became permanent and the divorce petition was admitted.

Harry Potter

The Elephant House coffee shop in Edinburgh states in a poster in its window, to be the birthplace of Harry Potter.

In 1995, Rowling finished the manuscript of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on an old typewriter. To the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evans, a reader who had been commissioned to review the early three chapters into the book, Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her search for a publisher. The book was sent to twelve publishers, who would reject the manuscript. A year later, it finally received approval (and a £1,500 advance) from publisher Barry Cunningham for Bloomsbury, a small British publisher in London, England. The decision to publish Rowling's book is reportedly due to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's president, who received the first chapter for review and immediately requested the second. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham maintains that he suggested Rowling get a job, as he believed she would have little chance of earning money writing children's books. The following spring there was an auction in the United States, in which the rights to publish the novel were sold, which were bought by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. Rowling said that she "nearly died" upon learning of it.

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published The Philosopher's Stone with 1,000 copies in print, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Following the worldwide success of his books, those copies went on to be worth between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first prize, the Nestlé Children's Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award, in the Children's Book of the Year category, and later, the Best Children's Book Award. Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998. In October 1998, Scholastic published The Sorcerer's Stone in the United States under the title i>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: A change Rowling has regretted, as she stated that she would have fought harder to keep the title if she had been in a better position.

In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Best Children's Book Award, for which it would make Rowling the first person to win the award three times. award. Later, he delayed the release of the fourth Harry Potter novel so that the other books could be appreciated by the public. In January 2000, The Prisoner of Azkaban won the Whitbread Award for Children's Book of the Year, though it lost the Book of the Year award which would ultimately go to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf with which it competed.

The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the United Kingdom and the United States on July 8, 2000, breaking sales records in both countries.. Approximately 372,775 copies of the book were sold on the first day in Britain, nearly equaling the number of copies sold for The Prisoner of Azkaban during its first year on sale. In the United States, the book sold three million copies in the first 48 hours, breaking all records for book sales. Rowling would confess that she went through a moment of crisis while writing the novel: "When I was halfway through the room, I realized that there was a serious plot flaw... I went through one of my darkest moments with this book... I rewrote a chapter thirteen times, though no one who has read it can tell which chapter it was or realize how difficult it was for me to create it ». Rowling was named Writer of the Year at the 2000 British Awards.

There was a three-year wait between the release of The Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This interval caused the press to speculate that Rowling had "writer's block”, which she fervently denied. Rowling later confessed that writing the book had been like an annoying chore. "I think Order of the Phoenix could have been shorter," she told Lev Grossman. "I knew it, and I ran out of time and energy by the time I got to the end."

The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came out on July 16, 2005. It also broke sales records, selling nine million copies in the first 24 hours on the market. While writing, he told a fan, "The sixth book has been planned for years, but before I started writing it seriously I spent two months going back over the sketches and making really sure I knew what I was doing.". He published on his website that the first chapter of the sixth book, which is based on a conversation between the Minister for Magic and the British Prime Minister]], was originally going to be the first chapter of The Stone philosopher, after The Chamber of Secrets and later The Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Best Book of the Year award at the Best British Book Awards.

The title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book was publicly released on December 21, 2006: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In February 2007, it was reported that Rowling had written in her room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that this was the place where she had finished writing the seventh book, on January 11 of the same year. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on July 21, 2007 and broke the record of its predecessor, becoming the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the UK. first day of release in the UK and US only. Joanne has said that the final chapter of the book was written "one day in 1990", as part of her early writing for the series. Over the period of one year in which Rowling completed the last book, allowed the filming of a documentary which aired in Great Britain on ITV on December 30. ember 2007. It was titled J.K. Rowling… A Year in the Life and showed her returning to her old home in Edinburgh, where she had completed the first Harry Potter book. Returning to her apartment after so many years made her cry, saying that it had been the place "where my life changed me completely".

Harry Potter became an international brand, valued at approximately £7bn, and the last four installments of Harry Potter have broken records for book sales fastest ever. The series, totaling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 74 languages.

In 2007, following the publication of the seventh and final book in the series, Bloomsbury organized a contest in which a thousand fans watched Rowling read the first few pages of the book at the Natural History Museum in London.

The Harry Potter books have also been recognized for awakening an interest in reading among young people, at a stage in their lives when they prefer to spend time watching television or looking at the Internet instead of reading. devoting it to reading, although the impact of books on children's reading habits has been questioned.

Harry Potter Movies

Footprints and signatures of the protagonists of the films by Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels. A film version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on November 16, 2001, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on November 15, 2002. Both were directed by Chris Columbus. On June 4, 2004, the film based on the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, was released. The fourth film version, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by another director, Mike Newell, and released on November 18, 2005. The Harry Potter and the Order of the Order Fénix was released on July 11, 2007. David Yates was the director and Michael Goldenberg was in charge of the script, taking over from Steve Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on July 15, 2009 (its premiere was on July 8 in the United States). David Yates also directed this film and Kloves was once again the screenwriter. In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would be divided into two parts, one of which would be released on November 19. in 2010 and the other on July 15, 2011. Yates directed both films.

Warner Bros. took Rowling's wishes and input into account when drafting the contract. One of the main stipulations was that the films had to be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which was strictly adhered to. Rowling was also involved in the auditions, especially in casting the lead, including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley). In an unprecedented request, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, which had won the competition to supply products to the film series, donated $18 million to the American Reading is Fundamental Foundation, in addition to various charitable programs.

The scripts for the first four films were written by Steve Kloves, a process in which he was assisted by Rowling who ensured that they did not differ from what would happen in future books in the series. He has said that Kloves was the person who learned many details of future plots, although not all of them. He has also said that he revealed to Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) some secrets about their characters earlier. they were revealed in the books. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked him if Harry would die at some point in the series; Rowling responded by saying "You have a death scene", without explicitly answering the question. Steven Spielberg was selected to direct the first film, but he turned it down. The press repeatedly stated that Rowling had a hand in their refusal, but she said that she does not decide who directs the films and that, given the choice, she would not have ruled out Spielberg. Rowling's first choice for director had been the member of Monty Python, Terry Gilliam, since he is a fan of the novels. Warner Bros. wanted to make a more family-friendly film, so they ultimately cast Chris Columbus.

The Harry Potter films were a worldwide success in their ten years of release of the different adaptations of each of the seven books, managing to raise more than 7.700 million dollars, which makes it the second highest grossing film franchise of history behind only the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even the films Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) were the highest grossing films in their release years, the latter being one of the ten highest-grossing feature films in history at the time.

After Harry Potter

Rowling in 2006.

Rowling has stated that she plans to continue writing after the publication of the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In an interview with Stephen Fry in 2005, Rowling stated that she would prefer to write her books under a pen name; however, she told Jeremy Paxman in 2003 that if she did, the press would probably "find it out in seconds". In 2006, Rowling revealed that she had finished writing a number of short stories and another "political" children's book. about a monster, aimed at a younger audience than Harry Potter.

You have no plans to write an eighth Harry Potter book, and have stated "I can't say I'll ever write another book about that world just because I think I don't know if I'll be able to do it in ten years." want to put myself at it again, though I think that's unlikely." Rowling has, however, said that she will write an encyclopedia on the wizarding world of Harry Potter, which will consist of unpublished material. and various notes. All proceeds from the book will go to charity. During a press conference at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood in 2007, Rowling said, when asked what the encyclopedia would be about, that "I haven't started writing it yet." write it. I never said it was the next thing I would do." In late 2007, Rowling claimed that it might take her ten years to write it, stating that "There would be no point in doing it unless it was amazing. The last thing I want to do is rush publication at the expense of quality."

In July 2007, Rowling stated that she wants to spend more time with her family, but as of 2008 she was writing two books, one for children and one for adults. She did not give details about the two projects, although she stated that she was excited that writing them reminds her of creating Sorcerer's Stone, explaining that at the time she was also writing two books until Harry became a bestseller. She said in October 2007 that it is unlikely that his future works are in the fantasy genre: "I think I've probably exhausted my fantasy...it would be incredibly difficult to go out and create another world that doesn't look like Harry's, as I might borrow a lot from him." In 2007, Rowling said that she was working on another book, "a half-finished work for children, which I think will be the next thing I'll publish". In March 2008, Rowling confirmed that her "political" children's book was nearing release. finish.

In March 2008, Rowling revealed in an interview that she had returned to writing in coffeehouses in Edinburgh, trying to create a new children's novel. "I'll keep writing children's books because that's what I enjoy the most," she told The Daily Telegraph. «I feel very good if I go to the right cafe; I blend in with the crowd and, of course, I don't sit in the middle of the bar watching everything that appears around me."

In December 2008, the author agreed to publish the book Tales of Beedle the Bard after auctioning off the original manuscript. The tales were first mentioned in the last Harry Potter book and consist of various tales related to magic, though not to the specific world of Harry Potter. .

Her first adult novel, An Unforeseen Vacancy, published in September 2012, was met with mixed reviews by critics. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, considers it "so intentionally banal, so depressingly stereotyped that it is not only disappointing, but also boring". although it is "ambitious in its themes, it is definitely routine in its style". For Lev Grossman, on the other hand, of Time magazine, "it is a great novel of contemporary England, ambitious, brilliant, irreverent, funny, profoundly sad and magnificently expressive". Meanwhile, the followers of Harry Potter and Rowling did not wait for Ediciones Salamandra to publish the novel in Spanish and began the same month of September "a collective translation project". The project is entitled The Spanish Vacancy and "those responsible them" they are "two translation students who do not reveal their names or their nationality". Salamandra, meanwhile, brought forward the launch of the new work, which was scheduled for 2013, to December 19, simultaneously in Spain and Latin America, both on paper (with an initial circulation of 300,000 copies) and in digital version. In December 2012, the BBC television channel announced the agreement to make a miniseries based on the novel, information that the author herself confirmed in an interview on the same channel; Its premiere was scheduled for 2014.

Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, he published his second book for adults, El canto del cuco, in which he ventures into the noir genre. The novel, which came out in April 2013, was very well received by critics and in July Rowling acknowledged its authorship.

That same year it was announced that she would be in charge of writing the script for several films based on her novel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and it was confirmed that she would co-write the script for a play based on the preschool life (before entering Hogwarts) of Harry Potter.

Personal life

Forbes has named Rowling the first person to earn US$1 billion from writing books, the second-richest female artist, and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. When she first appeared on the Forbes Billionaires list in 2004, Rowling did the math and said she had a lot of money, but she wasn't a billionaire. 2008 Rich List ranked Rowling 144th on its list of Britain's richest people. In 2001, Rowling bought a luxurious 19th-century estate XIX near the River Tay, in Aberfeldy, Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Rowling also owns a house in Merchiston, Edinburgh, and a £4.5 million mansion (6 $6 million) in Kensington, West London, on a street with 24-hour private security.

On December 26, 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born June 30, 1971), an anesthetist, in a private ceremony at his Aberfeldy mansion. This was the second marriage for both Rowling and for Murray, as he had been married to Dr. Fiona Duncan in 1996. Murray and Duncan separated in 1999 and divorced in the summer of 2001. Rowling and Murray's son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she took a break from working on the novel to raise her son. Rowling, Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was dedicated, was born on January 23, 2005. From her first marriage to the Portuguese Jorge Arantes she has a daughter, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes.

Religion

Rowling is a member of the Church of Scotland. On one occasion she said, "I believe in God, I don't believe in magic." Soon after she realized that if readers knew she was a Christian, they would be able to guess what would happen in the books. Rowling has stated that she struggles with their own beliefs. In an interview with the July 2007 Today television show, he said: "...Up until we got to the seventh book, the visions of what happens after death and beyond...could show much of what was to come. So... yes, my beliefs and my struggle with religious beliefs are very evident in this book."

Political stance

Rowling spoke about her political views when discussing the 2008 US presidential election with El País newspaper. She said that she was obsessed with the elections in the United States because of the impact they cause in the world. In February 2008, she declared that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be "extraordinary" in the White House. In the same interview, she said that her hero was Robert F. Kennedy.

Relationship with the press

Rowling has had a difficult relationship with the press. She admitted to being sensitive and that she dislikes the incoherent nature of the reporting. "In the same day, they went from saying 'she has classic writer's block' to saying 'she has classic writer's block'." to say, "She's been lenient with herself," she told The Times in 2003, "And I thought what could change in 24 hours." However, Rowling does not believe that she is a recluse who hates being interviewed. In 2001, the Press Protest Commission filed a complaint by Rowling over a series of unauthorized photographs of her with her daughter on a Mauritius beach, in OK! magazine. In 2007, Rowling's son David, assisted by Rowling and her husband, initially obtained an unfavorable judgment in a lawsuit seeking to prohibit the publication of a photograph of him. The image, taken by a photographer using a long-range lens, was later published in a Sunday Express article dealing with Rowling's family life and motherhood. would conclude in David's favor in May 2008.

Rowling has said she especially dislikes the British tabloid The Daily Mail, which has covered a stalker Joanne says doesn't exist and conducted interviews with her ex-husband. As one journalist noted, “Uncle Vernon is a grotesque philistine with violent tendencies and a particularly small brain. It is not difficult to guess which newspaper he reads [in The Goblet of Fire ]. »

Some people have speculated that Rowling's poor relationship with the press was the inspiration for the character of Rita Skeeter. However, Rowling said in 2000 that the character was thought of before she was famous: "People ask me if Rita Skeeter was created to reflect the popularity of Harry Potter , but the truth is that I had devised it a long time ago". "I tried to include Rita in The Sorcerer's Stone, in the part where Harry goes into the Leaky Cauldron for the first time and everyone says 'Mr Potter, I'm sorry!' is back!' I wanted to introduce a journalist in that scene, which would not be called Rita, but she would be a woman. Then I thought the character would work better if she was included in the fourth book, when Harry was supposed to reach the height of his fame."

Philanthropy

Rowling became one of the most successful youth writers in the world, so she tries to take advantage of this circumstance to get involved in social campaigns.

Rowling founded the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, a trust that uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. She also donates to child relief organizations, single parents, and multiple sclerosis research. Rowling stated, "I think we have a moral responsibility: when you've been given more [money] than you need, you should do wise things with it." and give it intelligently."

Against poverty

Once a single mother herself, Rowling is now the president of One Parent Families, a charity that helps single-parent families. Rowling was its first ambassador in the year 2000. She collaborated with Sarah Brown, the wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in writing a book of children's stories in aid of this association.

In 2001, the anti-poverty charity Comic Relief asked three well-known British writers—the cook and TV presenter Delia Smith, the creator of Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding and Rowling—to write three short books related to their works most famous for publication. Rowling's two books, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, are facsimiles of Hogwarts library books.. Since they went on sale in March 2001, the books have raised £15.7m for the fund. The £10.8m raised outside the UK went to the fledgling International Fund for Children and Young People in Crisis.

In 2005, Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP founded the Children's High Level Group. In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to speak out against the use of cage beds in children's psychiatric hospitals. In support of the CHLG, Rowling auctioned off one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a series of fairy tales mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The online bookstore Amazon.com bought the book for £1.95 million on December 13, 2007, making it the most expensive modern book ever sold at auction. Rowling commented on this: " This will mean a lot to the children who desperately need help. It means Christmas came early for me." Rowling distributed the remaining copies to those who are closely associated with the Harry Potter books. In 2008, Rowling agreed to publish the book, the proceeds of which are intended for the Children's High Level Group.

Political Donations

In September 2008, on the eve of the Labor convention, Rowling announced that she had donated £1 million to Labor, declaring: "I think poor and vulnerable families will be able to do much better under Labor." than under the Cameron-led Conservative Party. Gordon Brown introduced measures that will save as many children as possible. The Labor government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and the UK is one of the European Union countries leading the fight against it. David Cameron's promise of tax benefits to married couples, by contrast, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I had as a single mother. This sends the message that conservatives still believe that a two-income, childless, but married couple is more deserving of financial help than those who are struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat in times difficult".

Other Charities

J. K. Rowling on a reading at Radio City Music Hall in New York in August 2006.

In May 2008, Rowling and twelve other authors—Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, Lisa Appignanesi, Margaret Atwood, Lauren Child, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Michael Rosen, Axel Scheffler, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh—to write a short, free-themed piece on a single A5 card, which would be auctioned off for the charity Dyslexia Action and the writing community International PEN. Rowling contributed an 800-word Harry Potter prequel concerning Harry's father James Potter and his godfather Sirius Black, which takes place three years before the protagonist's birth. Rowling has stated that she does not want to return to Harry Potter in at least ten years.

Rowling contributed money and research support for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the disease from which her mother died in 1990. In 2006, she contributed a substantial sum of money to the creation of the new Center for Regenerative Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. On August 1 and 2, 2006, Rowling gave a reading at Radio City Music Hall in New York, along with Stephen King and John Irving. Proceeds from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity for artists who do not have health insurance and are unable to work, as well as the NGO Doctors Without Borders. In May 2007, Rowling donated $495,000 towards the reward. which ultimately amounted to more than $4.5 million for the ransom of a little British girl Madeleine McCann, who went missing in Portugal. Rowling, along with Nelson Mandela, Al Gore and Alan Greenspan, wrote the introduction to the collection of Gordon Brown's speeches, the proceeds of which were donated to the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory.

Legal disputes

Rowling, her publishers, and Time Warner, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter films, took numerous legal actions to protect their copyrights, although they themselves were also accused of violating them. The worldwide popularity of the series Harry Potter gave rise to a number of sequels and other unauthorized derivative works, prompting action to be taken to ban or contain them. For its part, while many of these legal proceedings went against from simple hacking, others pursued non-profit activities and were criticized as "too draconian".

On the other hand, some legal disputes consisted of a series of jurisdictional actions that Rowling and her publishers obtained to prohibit anyone from reading her books before the official release date. These actions were highly controversial, and occasionally some defenders of civil liberties and expression spoke out against them, arguing the "right to read".

One of the most controversial legal actions was the 2007 attempt to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon encyclopedia by Steven Vander Ark, a fan of the Harry Potter. Rowling and Warner Brothers filed lawsuits in New York court against RDR Books, the company that had tried to publish the book, alleging violation of copyrights and Rowling's intellectual property. Ultimately, the jury ruled that the encyclopedia could not be published and fined RDR Books $6,750 for each of the seven books that make up the Harry Potter series.

Opinion on transgender people

In December 2019, Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her case in an employment lawsuit against the company she worked for, the Center for Global Development, after her contract was not renewed. due to his critical comments about transgender people. The court ruled that Forstater's statements about transgender people (such as "Men and boys are men. Women and girls are women. It is impossible to change your sex"), and misgendering a person, promoted "an intimidating, hostile, demeaning, humiliating or offensive environment", and were not protected positions under the Equality Act 2010.

On June 6, 2020, Rowling criticized the use of the phrase "menstruating people" instead of "women" in an article. She later wrote: "If the sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex is not real, the lived reality of women globally is erased », and she maintains while empathizing with transgender people. Advocacy media group GLAAD called the tweets "anti-trans" and "cruel", writing: "JK Rowling continues to align herself with an ideology that willfully distorts the facts about gender identity and trans people. In 2020, there's no excuse to attack trans people." Several actors known for playing Rowling's characters criticized her views or spoke out in support of trans rights, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Eddie Redmayne, Evanna Lynch, Bonnie Wright and Katie Leung, as well as fan websites MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron. Actress Noma Dumezweni initially expressed her support for Rowling, but backed down after the repercussions. Radcliffe responded on behalf of The Trevor Project, writing: "Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more experience on this issue than Jo or I."

On June 10, 2020, Rowling posted a 3,600-word essay on her website in response to criticism. She said she was a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault, and stated that allowing trans women access to single-gender spaces was a danger to women, while stating that most trans people were vulnerable and deserved protection. She also wrote that many women find terms such as "menstruating people" demeaning. The essay was criticized by, among others, the trans childhood charity Mermaids. as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) on multiple occasions, although she rejects the label. Rowling has received support from some feminists, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and radical feminist Julie Bindel.

Works

Kids

• The ickabog (published online by deliveries from 26 May to 10 July 2020 and in the form of a book on 10 November 2020),
• Jack and the great adventure of the Christmas Pig (12 October 2021), novel

Youth

Harry Potter series

1. Harry Potter and Philosopher Stone (26 June 1997)
2. Harry Potter and Secret Camera (2 July 1998)
3. Harry Potter and Azkaban Prisoner (8 July 1999)
4. Harry Potter and the chalice of fire (8 July 2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Phoenix Order (21 June 2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Mystery of Prince (16 July 2005)
7. Harry Potter and Death Relics (21 July 2007)

Works related to the series

• Fantastic animals and where to find them (complete to the series Harry Potter(1 March 2001)
• Quidditch through time (complete to the series Harry Potter(1 March 2001)
• Harry Potter Prequel (July 2008)
• The stories of Beedle the Bardo (complete to the series Harry Potter(4 December 2008)
• Harry Potter and the cursed legacy (room of theatre) (31 July 2016)
• Hogwarts short stories. Waves, adversity and risky hobbies (Pottermore, September 6, 2016)
• Hogwarts short stories. Power, politics and heavy poltergeists (Pottermore, September 6, 2016)
• Hogwarts. An incomplete and unreliable guide (Pottermore, September 6, 2016)
• Fantastic animals and where to find them. Original movie script (19 November 2016)
• Fantastic animals: Grindelwald's crimes. Original movie script (16 November 2018)
• Fantastic animals: The secrets of Dumbledore. Original guide of the film (14 April 2022)

Adults

• Unforeseen vacancy (27 September 2012)

Cormoran Strike Series (as Robert Galbraith)

1. The song of the cuckoo (18 April 2013)
2. The silkworm (19 July 2014)
3. The office of evil (20 October 2015)
4. Lethal white (18 September 2018)
5. Turbid blood (15 September 2020)
6. The Ink Black Heart (30 August 2022)

Nonfiction

• Prologue to anthology MagicGil McNeil and Sarah Brown. Bloomsbury (2002).
• Introduction to Ending Child Poverty Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997–2006Gordon Brown. Bloomsbury (2006).
• «The First It Girl: J.K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford», in relation to the book with the letters of Mitford edited by Peter Y. Sussman. The Daily Telegraph (26 July 2006).
• «The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination». J. K. Rowling. Harvard Magazine (5 June 2008).
• "Gordon Brown – The 2009 Time 100." Time (30 April 2009)
• "The Single Mother's Manifesto." The Times (14 April 2010)
• "I feel duped and angry at David Cameron's reaction to Leveson." The Guardian (30 November 2012)
• "Woman's Hour Takeover." Woman's HourBBC Radio 4 (28 April 2014).
• "Isn't it time we left orphanages to fairytales?" The Guardian (17 December 2014)
• Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and Importance of Imagination. J. K. Rowling. Sphere (14 April 2015). Translated by title Living life well. The unexpected benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. Salamandra (5 April 2018).
• "A Love Letter to Europe" (co-worker) (October 31, 2019)

Filmography

Honorary Distinctions

• Official Lady of the Order of the British Empire (2000)
• Lady of the Order of the Legion of Honor, French Republic (2008)
• Lady of the Order of the Smile, Republic of Poland
• In 2003, in Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, she became the first writer to receive the Prince of Asturias Award of Concordia.

Honorary titles

Rowling has received honorary degrees from the University of St. Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University and the University of Aberdeen.

On June 5, 2008, Rowling gave a speech at Harvard University's commencement ceremony, where she received another honorary degree.