Harry Potter

Biography - J. K. Rowling

Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, England on 31st July, 1965. Her sister Di was born two years later.
She wrote her first story at the age of six, about a rabbit called Rabbit who got the measles and was visited by friends and a giant called Mr Bee. Later she moved from Yate to Winterbourne (close to Bristol) where she had friends (brother and sister) with the surname Potter which she wanted to have because there were many jokes about 'Rolling' pins.
At the age of nine her parents moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. After finishing Tutshill Primary School she went to Wyedean Comprehensive. She was quiet, freckly, shortsighted and rubbish at sports. Her favourite subject was English, followed by other languages.
After school she went to Exeter University to study French for being a bilingual secretary. In 1990 she taught English in Portugal. She worked in the afternoon and evenings but the mornings she left free for writing her first novel. It was the first Harry Potter book.
In Portugal she married a journalist. Her daughter Jessica was born in 1993. After she got divorced, she went back to Edinburgh, near to her sister Di. Here J. K. Rowling wanted to finish her book and to publish it.
Living on social security and being an unemployed single parent, she wrote 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' in a café, during her daughter's napping. Altogether it took five years to write the first book, but in this time she wrote parts of the six sequels, too. The Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book after a number of rejections. It was one of the highest grants which children's authors can get.
In 1997 Bloomsbury (UK) bought it for the equivalent of about US $4,000 and a few months later Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic Press bought the American rights for enough money that she was able to give up teaching. Harry Potter was first published in the UK in June 1997 and in September 1998 in the USA.
Since the books have been published, they have been a tremendous success. The books have been published in several countries and her life has changed dramatically because she has to travel to different countries. The series have won several awards and prices and the biography continues. With the publication of the Harry Potter books her life's ambition has become true.

(by Johannes, Annesuse, Katharina, 9a)