There was a time when no one knew the name Harry Potter. Now the adventures of this extraordinary student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are read in over 45 languages, including Russian, Thai, and even ancient Greek. No one can explain the Harry Potter phenomenon not even J.K. Rowling, his creator.
J.K. Rowling was born in England in 1965. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be a writer. When she was 6, she wrote her first story about a rabbit tha gets sick. At school she used to make up stories to tell her friends.
After graduating from college, she worked as a secretary. But she didn’t give up her dream. She spent her lunch hour writing stories, mainly for adults. Then in 1990, on a train trip to London, she got the idea for the boy wizard. She says he just appeared in her head. She soon created a whole cast of unique characters to help Harry battle the forces of darkness.
She kept working on the story while she was teaching English in Portugal, where she married, had her first child, and divorced a year later. When she returned to England, she brought back a quitcase of Harry Potter stories.
After returning home, she was broke and living in a small, cramped apartment. She continued writing, and in 1995, finished the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was published in 1997 and became an unexpected bestseller.
Rowling’s life has changed dramatically. She became internationally famous and now earns around $40 million a year. She remarried, had a second child, and currently lives in Scotland.
