M E N U   Home What is O'Casey's? What's On? This Month's Author Our Readers Photo Gallery Recordings Archives Get Involved!    J . K .   R O W L I N G   "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine." Joanne Murray (née Rowling), better known by her penname J. K. Rowling, is perhaps the world's most famous modern female writer. She is the author of the phenomenally popular children's fantasy series, Harry Potter, which became a sensation upon the release of her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997. Rowling is equally as famous for her 'rags to riches' story - at the time of writing the first Harry Potter book she was surviving on welfare in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Often quoted as favouring local cafés in which to write, she balanced writing, single parenthood and her career as a teacher. Only a few years later, Rowling would find herself one of the richest and most influential writers of our time, with a fandom stretching right across the world. Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 near Bristol, Gloucestershire, to father Peter and mother Anne. She has a younger sister, Dianne, to whom Rowling read the first of her fantasy stories as a child. Notable influences in Rowling's budding career as a writer came in the form of her great aunt, who instilled in her "a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind" and introduced her to the works of author Jessica Mitford, who became her heroine and role model. Rowling read for a degree in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, then following a year of study in Paris, moved to London to work as a bilingual secretary for the charity Amnesty International. Encouraged by publishers who thought that young boys would not wish to read a book written by a woman, Rowling took on a middle name, Kathleen (her paternal grandmother's name), to be part of the pseudonym J. K. Rowling. Rowling found quick and unexpected success, first winning an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to write, and then being the subject of an auction for the rights to publish her first novel in America. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone won numerous awards, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the prestigious British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year. Her fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, broke all literary sales records, achieving as many sales in its first day as her previous novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sold in its first year. Each following book has since broken that record, the final in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows selling in excess of 11 million copies in its first day of release. Rowling's books have also been the subject of a series of highly successful films, which in their turn became international hits. The sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released in July 2009, with two more in the series to follow. The Harry Potter series is now a global brand worth an estimated £7 billion. The books have been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages. Rowling is credited for sparking a new interest in literature among the young at a time when they were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television. Official website: http://www.jkrowling.com/