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About J.K. Rowling
The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines
of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and
metaphorically, really appealed to me."
Like that of her own character, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's life
has the luster of a fairy tale. Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny
Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone at a table in a café during her daughter's naps — and
it was Harry Potter that rescued her. First, the Scottish Arts Council gave
her a grant to finish the book. After its sale to Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic
Books, the accolades began to pile up. Harry Potter won The British Book Awards
Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize, and rave reviews on both
sides of the Atlantic. Book rights have been sold to England, France, Germany,
Italy, Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden.
A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad." But Rowling has always written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."
For Rowling, the change in her fortunes has been slightly bewildering. But her daughter has no doubt about her mother's new career: when asked what mommies do, she replies without hesitation, "Mommies write!"