the author
J. K. Rowling
- From rags to riches

By Shehrazade Zafar-Arif

J.K. Rowling is the name that strikes awe, admiration and respect in the hearts of many - a name that is known as the genius behind the best-selling fantasy series, Harry Potter.

Though she may appear in our wild imaginations as a divine, mystical muse who has crept into our world from another, to fill our lives with stories, Joanne Kathleen Rowling - better known as simply Jo to her friends - actually started out as a quite mundane, run-of-the-mill girl.

Born on July 31st (note - that's also Harry's birthday!) in 1965 in Chipping Sudbury, England, Rowling describes her childhood as happy and carefree - much better than that of her protagonist's.

The author was interested in writing from a young age, often jotting down short stories to read to her younger sister, Dianne. One of her 'best', as she jokingly adds, was a short anecdote entitled 'The Rabbit'.

About her school life, she mentions that she was rather like her beloved character, Hermione Granger - "a bookish know-it-all who generally got on everyone's nerves". She was a clever girl, though disliked by some of her more 'stuffy' teachers. She was said to excel in languages, but was "absolutely hopeless" at sports and mathematics.

Rowling went on to study French and Classics at the University of Exeter. After a year in Paris, she moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. It was on a trip from Manchester to London that her train was delayed for four hours. That fateful delay may have been a hassle for the passengers on board, but for the Potterheads, it was a blessing in disguise, for it was then that Rowling was struck with the idea of a young boy studying at a school for wizards. She admits that till today she has no idea where this thought came from; all she knows is that it "grabbed onto her and refused to let go" until she reached her Clapham Junction flat and began writing.

It is a well-known fact that the greatest people in the world often have to go through terrible hardships before they reach success. Indeed, the next few years were the worst of Rowling's life - perhaps that is why we find so much suffering in her books. Rowling claims that she wishes to give the novels a realistic feel, and that the "real world" is not "a bed of roses".

In December 1990, her beloved mother, who had always been a source of support and comfort for her, died after a ten year long struggle with multiple sclerosis. This drastic turn point had such a traumatic effect on Rowling that it led her to kill off the parents of the main character in the book she was currently working on. She confesses that, through the deaths of Lily and James Potter, she was able to vent out her frustration and grief over her own loss.

Rowling then moved to Portugal to teach English. It was there that she met and married Portuguese television journalist, Jorge Arantes, in 1992. They had a daughter, Jessica, named after Rowling's hero, Jessica Mitford. Sadly, they divorced a year later, and Rowling and Jessica were left on their own.

Now a single mother with a child to look after, Rowling moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be closer to her sister. She spent most of her time in various cafes, scribbling down bits and pieces onto napkins - whenever, she mentions, she could coax Jessica into sleeping.

Rowling finished the manuscript on an old manual typewriter and began her quest for a publisher. Her book was sent to twelve publishing houses - all of which rejected it. Those publishers would soon come to regret their decisions, because finally, Rowling's manuscript was accepted by Bloomsbury, due to the enthusiastic reaction of Alice Newton, the chairman's eight-year-old daughter.

Rowling claims that she never expected her book to be such a great success. Of course, 'great success' is an understatement. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone alone sold at over a thousand copies. The book won its first award, the Nestle Smarties Book Prize, five months later.

For those of you who wonder where Rowling's pen name originated from, the answer is quite unexpected: Because her agent feared that the prospect of a female author would turn off male readers, she used her first two initials along with her last name as her identity.

Currently, our beloved author resides in Aberfeldy and is married to anesthetist Neil Murray. She is now the proud mother of, not only fifteen-year-old Jessica, but also four-year-old David and two-year-old Mackenzie - to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

So now, dear readers: The next time you pick up your battered, thoroughly read copy of Harry Potter, take a moment to glance at the author's name on the spine and marvel over how such an ordinary girl grew up to be the woman she is today - the woman responsible for giving us one of the best book series of all time.