J.

K Rowling
Is a British author, film producer, television producer,
screenwriter, and philanthropist. She is best known for writing
the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has won multiple awards
and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling
book series in history. The books are the basis of a popular film
series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the
scripts and was a producer on the final films. She also
writes crime fiction under the name Robert Galbraith.
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a
researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty
International when she conceived the idea for the Harry
Potter series while on a delayed train
from Manchester to London in 1990. The seven-year period that
followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child,
divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first
novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was
published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the
last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007.
Since then, Rowling has written five books for adult readers: The
Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert
Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series, which
consists of The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), The
Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil (2015), and Lethal White (2018).[8]
Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life in which she progressed
from living on benefits to being the world's first billionaire
author. She lost her billionaire status after giving away much of
her earnings to charity but remains one of the wealthiest people
in the world. She is the UK's best-selling living author, with sales
in excess of £238 million.[11] The 2016 Sunday Times Rich
List estimated Rowling's fortune at £600 million, ranking her as
the joint 197th richest person in the UK. Time named her a runner-
up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral,
and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010,
Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by
leading magazine editors. She has supported multiple charities,
including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, and Multiple
Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, as well as launching her own
charity, Lumos. Although she writes under the pen name J. K.
Rowling, her name, before her remarriage, was Joanne Rowling.
Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not
want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers asked
that she use two initials rather than her full name. As she had no
middle name, she chose K (for Kathleen) as the second initial of
her pen name, from her paternal grandmother. She calls herself
Jo. Following her remarriage, she has sometimes used the name
Joanne Murray when conducting personal business.[ During
the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne
Kathleen Rowling and her entry in Who's Who lists her name also
as Joanne Kathleen Rowling. Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July
1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, the daughter of science technician
Anne (née Volant) and Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer Peter James
Rowling. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's
Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14
March 1965. One of Rowling's maternal great-grandfathers,
Dugald Campbell, was a Scottish man from Lamlash. Her mother's
French paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the War
Cross for exceptional bravery in defending the village
of Courcelles-le-Comte during World War I. Rowling originally
believed Volant had won the Legion of Honour during the war, as
she said when she received it herself in 2009. She later discovered
the truth when featured in an episode of the UK genealogy
series Who Do You Think You Are? in which she found out it was a
different Louis Volant who won the Legion of Honour. When she
heard her grandfather's story of bravery and discovered that the
War Cross was for "ordinary" soldiers like her grandfather, who
had been a waiter, she stated the War Cross was "better" to her
than the Legion of Honour.