Joanne (J.K.) Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England to parents Peter Rowling and Anne Volant Rowling. A great lover of books, Rowling began writing stories at a young age. In interviews, Rowling later recalled the thrill of penning her first story at age 6 – a brief tale about a rabbit named “Rabbit” which she shared with her younger sister, Dianne.

At the age of nine, Rowling relocated with her family to the village of Tutshill near Chepstow, Wales. Soon after, Rowling’s mother, Anne, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Despite her mother’s declining health, Rowling excelled academically at Wyedean Comprehensive School and attained the status of Head Girl in her final year. Upon graduation from Wyedean, Rowling enrolled at the University of Exeter. While Rowling wanted to study literature, her parents insisted she follow a more practical course of study. As a compromise (which, she later recalled, “satisfied no one”), Rowling pursued degrees in French and Classics.

With a bachelor’s degree and a year of study in Paris under her belt, Rowling accepted a position as a secretary and researcher with Amnesty International in London. In 1990, Rowling boarded a train to visit her then-boyfriend in Manchester. While her returning train sat delayed on its journey to King’s Cross station, Rowling claims the idea for a story about a boy who didn’t know he was a wizard came to her “fully formed” (Ref. 4) She quickly put pen to paper, beginning work on the manuscript that would become Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Six months after Rowling set to work on Harry Potter, her mother passed away from complications due to multiple sclerosis. Rowling channeled her grief into the pages of her manuscript, whose central character, Harry, also endures the premature loss of parents. In 2007, Rowling noted that immediately following the loss of her mother “death became a central, if not the central, theme of the seven books” (2).

Rowling soon moved to Porto, Portugal and took a job teaching English as a foreign language. There, she met and married Portuguese journalist, Jorge Arantes, and gave birth to a daughter, Jessica. In 1993, Rowling left the abusive marriage and took her newborn daughter to Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister, Dianne.

Over the next several years, Rowling battled clinical depression as she struggled to raise her daughter in poverty. Jobless and barely surviving on state benefits, Rowling later stated that she felt like “the biggest failure [she] knew” (2). She continued to work on her Harry Potter story in cafes while Jessica slept, creating plots and outlines for what she now envisioned as a seven book series. At her 2008 Harvard commencement address, Rowling recalled that experiencing failure enabled her to “direct all [her] energy into the only work that mattered”(3).

In 1995, Rowling completed the manuscript which she titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and sent it off to the Christopher Little Agency in London. Meanwhile, she worked toward completing a postgraduate certificate of education, which would enable her to teach in Scotland. Little agreed to represent Rowling and sent the manuscript to a dozen publishing houses, all of which declined to publish the wizard story. Finally, Barry Cunningham, an editor at Bloomsbury, purchased Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for his new children’s book imprint. In order to appeal to young male readers, Bloomsbury encouraged Rowling to publish using her first and middle initials to disguise her gender. Not given a middle name at birth, Rowling adopted the initial of her maternal grandmother, Kathleen, and published Philosopher’s Stone (and all subsequent novels) under the name “J. K. Rowling.” Rowling earned a £1500 advance for the novel which had an initial print run of just 1,000 copies in June of 1997. Although the Scottish Arts Council awarded her an £8,000 grant to write Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, both Little and Cunningham warned Rowling not to quit her day job since her books were not considered very commercially viable.

The book sold fairly well in the United Kingdom, but Rowling’s first taste of larger success came when Scholastic purchased the rights to publish Philosopher’s Stone in the U.S. for an unprecedented $105,000. The large sum enabled Rowling to quit teaching and write full time. Scholastic released the novel under a new title, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, in 1998. Soon after, Rowling won a variety of prestigious awards including the Nestle Smarties Prize.

With the publication of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 1998, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the following year, Rowling became a fixture of bestseller lists in the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere. Rowling agreed to sell the film rights of the first two books in the series to Warner Bros. on the condition that she be afforded some degree of creative control over the films’. The July 8, 2000 launch of the fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire broke all sales records in the U.K. and the U.S., where it sold more than three million copies in the first 24 hours of its release. Subsequent books–Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)–have also smashed sales records, making the Harry Potter series some of the bestselling books of all time, behind only The Bible and The Red Book.

In a dramatic turnaround from her days as a struggling single mother, Rowling was named the first self-made billionaire (in U.S. dollars) author by Forbes magazine in 2004. She retained this status until 2012 when her estimated worth dropped below the $1 billion mark due, in part, to large contributions to charity the previous year.

As Rowling’s celebrity grew, so did her desire for privacy. The author gave only select and limited interviews to the press, particularly during the three year gap between the publication of the fourth and fifth series installments. During this period, she married Dr. Neil Murray, a Scottish anesthesiologist on December 26, 2001 and gave birth to two more children, David (born 2003) and Mackenzie (born 2005). She also engaged in a variety of philanthropic endeavors including establishing the Volant Charitable Trust (named for her later mother) which funds anti-poverty efforts. Profits from two companion books to the Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, benefited the U.K. non-profit Comic Relief. Additionally, Rowling is an active spokesperson for multiple sclerosis research and awareness.

Following the July 21, 2007 release of the much-anticipated final series installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling embarked on her first multi-city book tour since 2000. The “Open Book Tour” included readings and book signings for schoolchildren in New York City, New Orleans and New York City, as well as a reading and signing for fans of all ages selected by random drawing.

In June of 2011, four years after the publication of her last book, J.K. Rowling announced the launch of a new interactive website called Pottermore, which would include new content about the world of Harry Potter and would become the launching pad for Harry Potter e-books. Pottermore opened to one million Beta users later that summer and is slated to open to the public in spring 2012.

Rowling revealed in February 2012 that her five year hiatus from publishing would soon come to an end.  The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first novel for adults will be published by Little, Brown Book Group on September 27, 2012.

Rowling continues to write and live in Edinburgh, Scotland with her family.

Titles and Honors (excluding prizes for specific books)

– Officer of the Order of the British Empire
– Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
– Honorary degrees: Harvard University, St. Andrew’s University, University of Edinburgh, Napier University, University of Aberdeen
– French Legion of Honor
– British Book Awards: Author of the Year (2000), Outstanding Achievement (2008)
– Gold Blue Peter Badge
– Prince of Asturias Award
– Hans Christian Anderson Literature Award (inaugural)

References

1. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/j-k-rowling
2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20001720/ns/dateline_nbc-harry_potter/t/harry-potter-final-chapter/
3. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/
4. http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/1000-globemail-matas.html