J.K. Rowling 

Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 at Yate General Hospital to Peter and Anne Rowling. Her father was an aircraft engineer at the Rolls Royce factory, and her mother was a science technician in the Chemistry Department at Wyedean Comprehensive. Her sister, Dianne, was born two years after Jo.  In 1969, the family moved to a nearby community of Winterbourne and Jo enrolled in St. Michael’s Primary School. At the age of 9, they moved to Tutshill, which is a small Gloucestershire village on the border of Wales. Jo and Dianne attended Wyedean Comprehensive. Jo became the Head girl. Jo’s teenage years were often difficult due to her mothers M.S.,  and her constrained relationship with her father. She found comfort in books. She wrote a book about a rabbit called “Rabbit” at the age of five. After graduating from Wyedean Comprehensive in 1983, Jo Rowling studied at Exeter University. She agreed to study French and the Classics as a compromise with her parents. Jo wanted to study English, but her parents thought it would be hard for her to find a job later in life. She received her BA in 1986 and moved to London to work for Amnesty International, which is an organization that campaigns against human rights abuses all over the world. The first draft of Harry Potter came from her dreams of working at Amnesty International. On a train trip from Manchester to London, she let her imagination run wild and created the first draft, although it would be several years before it was completed. Her mother died in 1990 due to multiple sclerosis. Her mother’s death inspired her to make Harry Potter an orphan who can’t understand the loss of his own parents.  

To escape the reminders of her mother's passing, she moved to Portugal to teach English. There, she met Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist. They married on October 16, 1992. In 1993, they had a daughter named Jessica Isabel. The pair split up in 1993. In 1994, Jo returned to the United Kingdom with Jessica. They lived in Edinburgh. Jo was an unemployed, single mother which provided her more time to complete her first novel. During this time, Jo was diagnosed with clincial depression and experienced suicidal thoughts, but her mental illness inspired the darkest creatures of the Harry Potter series, the Dementors. he sent the manuscript to 12 publishing houses. They all rejected the manuscript since the title implied it was a children’s book, which was hard to sell at the time. In 1996, Alice Newton, 8 years old, the daughter of the president of Bloomsbury, read the first chapter of the book and wanted to know what happened next. Bloomsbury Publishing House requested that Jo added a ‘K’ to her name to attract young boy readers. They thought that since Jo was a female writer, she wouldn’t attract the target audience of the young boys. The ‘K’ in her name is her paternal grandmother's name, Kathleen. In 1997, Bloomsbury published the 1st edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’. They printed 1000 copies, in which 500 went to public libraries. The sale was successful and she created sequels ending with ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ in 2007. By 2018, there will be more than five hundred million copies of Harry Potter, and the books have been translated into eighty languages. During a break between the 4th and 5th books of the Harry Potter series, she went on to publish “Fantastic Beasts” and “Where to Find Them” in 2001. She published these books under the pseudonym Newt Scamander. Also, She published Qudditch Through the Ages in 2001 under the pseudonym Kennilworthy Whisp.

 J.K. Rowling became one of the world’s best- selling novelists and known for her philanthropy. On December 26, 2001, she married Dr. Neil Murrary and had two children. David was born in 2003, and Mackenzie was born in 2005. In 2012, Pottermore was launched along with “The Casual Vacancy", her first intended adult audience book. Following those launches, she published “The Cuckoo’s Calling" in 2013, “The Silkworm” in 2014, “Career of Evil” in 2015, “Lethal White” in 2018, and “Troubled Blood” in 2020. The 6th novel in the Cormoran Strike series was scheduled to be released in late 2022. In 2016,  there was the debut of the first screenplay for “Fantastic Beasts” and “Where to Find Them”. After those debuts, “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" released in 2018 and “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” released in 2021. She has worked as a producer and consultant on the Harry Potter film series. She used to teach in Scotland and Portugal. Jo worked as a research and bilingual secretary at Amnesty International. She is a Volant Charitable Trust founder, Children’s High Level Group (Lumos) cofounder in 2005, Shannon Trust benefactor, GingerBread Charity president, and has appeared on international tv and radio programs. She has written under many names including  J.K. Rowling, Newt Scamnader, Kennilworthy Whsip, and Robert Galbraith.