J. K. (Jo) Rowling was born in 1965 and moved house twice when she was growing up. The first move was from Yate (just outside Bristol) to Winterbourne. The second move was when Jo was nine and she moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean.
Jo went to Tutshill Primary School, and then on to Wyedean Comprehensive. She was quiet, freckly, short-sighted and not very good at sports. She even broke her arm playing netball. Her favourite subject by far was English, but she also liked languages . . .
She always loved writing more than anything. ‘The first story that I ever wrote down, when I was five or six, was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee, I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so. I was afraid they’d tell me I didn’t have a hope.’ At school she would entertain her friends at lunchtime with stories.
After school, Jo attended the University of Exeter in Devon where she studied French. Her parents hoped that by studying languages she would enjoy a great career as a bilingual secretary. But Jo recalls that she never paid much attention in meetings because she was too busy scribbling down ideas.
When she was 25, Jo was delayed on a train from Manchester to London. On the train Jo says that the idea for Harry Potter simply ‘strolled into her head fully formed’. But she didn’t have a pen so couldn’t write all her thoughts down! But the idea had taken hold and during the next five years she started writing and outlining the plots for each book.
Jo went to Portugal to teach English. There she married and her daughter Jessica was born. And she kept writing. When she returned to the UK, Jo had a suitcase full of stories about Harry Potter. She moved to Edinburgh with her young daughter and worked as a French teacher. In 1996 Bloomsbury offered to publish Jo’s first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
‘The moment I found out that Harry would be published was one of the best of my life,’ says Jo.
She has married Dr Neil Murray in 2001, and a brother for Jessica, David, was born in 2003. A sister, Mackenzie, followed in January 2005. She lives with her family in Edinburgh.
The Harry Potter novels have now sold approximately 450 million copies worldwide and been translated into 72 languages. Jo was the first children’s author to be voted the BA Author of the Year, and also to win the British Book Awards Author of the Year. I admired her so much..
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