J. K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling, known as J. K. Rowling, is a British author born in Yate, England, in 1965. She became famous worldwide through the Harry Potter series, written in English and translated into dozens of languages, which made her one of the most widely read authors of contemporary children's and young adult fiction. Her significance lies in reviving fantasy for young readers and in building a fictional world that spread from the page to films and video games.

She grew up in a middle-class family in Gloucestershire. Her mother, who had multiple sclerosis, loved reading, and the household was full of books; her father read The Wind in the Willows to her and her sister. As a child she enjoyed making up stories and telling them to her sister Di. As a teenager she read the autobiography of the campaigner Jessica Mitford, who became a lasting role model. Her secondary school years were difficult, shaped by bullying and by her mother's illness, yet she was a bright pupil. She did not win a place at Oxford in 1982, so she studied French and Classics at the University of Exeter, where she later admitted that she put her social life ahead of her studies.

After university she worked as a bilingual secretary and did research for Amnesty International. In 1990, on a train delayed for four hours between Manchester and London, the idea came to her of a boy who discovers he is a wizard. That same year her mother died, a loss she said shaped the emotional tone of the story. She moved to Porto to teach English, married a Portuguese journalist and had a daughter. The marriage ended amid serious personal difficulties, and Rowling, who was suffering from clinical depression, settled in Edinburgh with her child. She finished the manuscript there, partly writing in cafés while her daughter slept.

The book took time to find a publisher, and twelve houses turned it down before Bloomsbury accepted it. The publisher asked her to use initials instead of her first name, and she chose K in honour of her paternal grandmother, Kathleen. The first novel appeared in 1997 in a modest print run; later, the American rights sold for 105,000 dollars. Between 1997 and 2007 she published seven volumes following Harry's education at Hogwarts and his struggle against Lord Voldemort. Her style blends humour, mystery and a darkening tone as the hero grows up. Her central themes include friendship, loss, death and the moral choice between belonging and power.

Beyond the saga, she has written the crime series Cormoran Strike under the pen name Robert Galbraith. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire and made a Companion of Honour for services to literature and philanthropy. In 2000 she founded the Volant Charitable Trust, and in 2005 she co-founded the charity Lumos. Since 2019 her public statements on gender identity, particularly on transgender women's access to women's spaces, have drawn sharp criticism, and the debate over her positions continues. Her legacy is twofold: she renewed interest in fantasy among young readers, and she left a community of readers and a cultural phenomenon that is still studied and debated today.