| Like that of her
own character, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's life seems to be almost like a fairy tale.
She was divorced,
she had no job and she was living on public assistance in a tiny
Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, when she started to write the Harry Potter books.
Joanne 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, people really started to take notice. Harry
Potter won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize,
and was given rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.
Harry Potter was so popular that book rights were 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!" |
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