J.K. Rowling
BIOGRAPHY:
- was born on July 31st, 1965 in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, England.
- Her given name at birth was Joanne Kathleen.
- she has actually been writing since she was 5 or 6 years old. Her first story, called Rabbit, was filled with interesting characters, such as a large bee called Miss Bee.
- Ms. Rowling met and married a journalist in Portugal (he was Portuguese), and her daughter Jessica was born in 1993.
- Shortly after the birth of her daughter, the marriage ended in divorce and Ms. Rowling, along with her infant daughter, moved to Edinburgh, Scotland.
- To support her daughter and herself, Ms. Rowling began working as a French teacher. After several months Arthur A Levine Books/Scholastic Press bought the American rights to the first “Harry Potter”, and Ms. Rowling received enough money to give up teaching and write full time.
- By the summer of 2000, Ms. Rowling had reportedly earned over $400 million for her first three Harry Potter books, which have been printed in 35 languages and sold over 30 million copies. Her fourth book in the popular series, entitled Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, pre-sold over one million advanced copies, with a first printing of 5.3 million.
- This brought a tremendous amount of relief and happiness to a lot of competing authors - and a tremendous honor to Ms. J K Rowling.
