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J.K.
Rowling
Scotland's
latest superstar writer seems destined to outsell Robert Louis
Stevenson and J.M. Barrie combined.
Like that of her own character, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling's
life has the luster of a fairy tale. Divorced, living on public
assistance in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter,
Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at a table
in an Edinburgh café during her daughter's naps —
and it was Harry Potter that rescued her. First, the Scottish
Arts Council gave her a grant to finish the book. After its
sale to Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic Books, the accolades
began to pile up. Harry Potter won The British Book Awards Children's
Book of the Year, and the Smarties Prize, and rave reviews on
both sides of the Atlantic. Book rights have been sold to England,
France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Spain
and Sweden.
A
graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed
single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very
low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge,
I would have gone stark raving mad." But Rowling has always
written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I
was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."
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