short essay on j.k. rowling

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Humble beginnings

Harry potter and success, harry on the big screen and on stage, writing for adults, honors and controversy.

What did J.K. Rowling write?

How did j.k. rowling become famous.

• Do adults read children's literature?

J.K. Rowling

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• Official Site of J. K. Rowling
• J.K. Rowling - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• J.K. Rowling - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

What is J.K. Rowling famous for?

J.K. Rowling is the British author who created the popular and critically acclaimed Harry Potter series (seven books published between 1997 and 2007), about a lonely orphan who discovers that he is actually a wizard and enrolls in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In addition to the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling wrote such companion volumes as Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them (2001) and cowrote a story on which the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) was based. Her adult fiction includes The Casual Vacancy (2012) and the Cormoran Strike series (as Robert Galbraith).

J.K. Rowling started writing about Harry Potter after graduating from the University of Exeter. After a brief marriage and the birth of her daughter, Rowling settled in Edinburgh and lived on public assistance between stints as a French teacher and writing. After many rejections, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published to immediate success.

What is J.K. Rowling’s real name?

J.K. Rowling was born Joanne Rowling. After her publisher recommended she use a gender-neutral pen name, she chose J.K., adding the middle name Kathleen. She published her crime fiction series, which includes The Cuckoo’s Calling , under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Recent News

J.K. Rowling (born July 31, 1965, Yate, near Bristol, England) is a British author, creator of the popular and critically acclaimed Harry Potter series, about a young sorcerer in training.

After graduating from the University of Exeter in 1986, Rowling began working for Amnesty International in London , where she started to write the Harry Potter adventures. In the early 1990s she traveled to Portugal to teach English as a foreign language, but, after a brief marriage and the birth of her daughter, she returned to the United Kingdom, settling in Edinburgh . Living on public assistance between stints as a French teacher, she continued to write.

The first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997; also published as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ), was released under the name J.K. Rowling. (Her publisher recommended a gender-neutral pen name; born Joanne Rowling, she used J.K., adding the middle name Kathleen.)

The book was an immediate success, appealing to both children, who were its intended audience, and adults. Featuring vivid descriptions and an imaginative story line, it followed the adventures of the unlikely hero Harry Potter, a lonely orphan who discovers that he is actually a wizard and enrolls in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The book received numerous awards, including the British Book Award. Succeeding volumes— Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)—also were best sellers, available in more than 200 countries and some 60 languages. The seventh and final novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , was released in 2007.

The Harry Potter series sparked great enthusiasm among children and was credited with generating a new interest in reading. Film versions of the books were released in 2001–11 and became some of the top-grossing movies in the world. In addition, Rowling wrote the companion volumes Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them (2001), which was adapted into a film series (2016, 2018) that featured screenplays by Rowling; Quidditch Through the Ages (2001); and The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008)—all of which originated as books read by Harry Potter and his friends within the fictional world of the series. Proceeds from their sales were donated to charity.

She later cowrote a story that became the basis for the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , which premiered in 2016 and was a critical and commercial success, winning an unprecedented nine Olivier Awards, including best new play. In the production, Harry is a husband and father but is still struggling with his past, while his son Albus must contend with his father’s legacy . A book version of the script, which was advertised as the eighth story in the Harry Potter series, was published in 2016. Two years later the play transferred to Broadway, and in 2018 it won six Tony Awards , including best new play.

Rowling made her first foray into adult fiction with The Casual Vacancy (2012; TV miniseries 2015), a contemporary social satire set in a small English town. In 2013 it was revealed that the author had penned the crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling , using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The Silkworm —the second book in the series, which centred on the detective Cormoran Strike, a down-on-his-luck war veteran—was released in 2014. Later installments included Career of Evil (2015), Lethal White (2018), Troubled Blood (2020), and The Ink Black Heart (2022). A television series based on the books premiered in the United Kingdom in 2017 and in the United States the following year. In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rowling began serializing a new children’s book, The Ickabog , for free online; it was published in November. She described the fairy tale , which was unrelated to Harry Potter, as an exploration of “truth and the abuse of power.” She later published The Christmas Pig (2021), about a boy who loses his favourite toy and then embarks on a fantastical quest to find it.

Rowling was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001. In 2009 she was named a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour .

However, in June 2020, Rowling drew unaccustomed criticism for taking exception on social media to an article that referenced “people who menstruate.” In part, Rowling tweeted “‘People who menstruate .’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out.” Rowling’s comments were seen as being unsympathetic to or out of touch with the transgender community . Some of the actors in the Harry Potter series, including Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson publicly opposed the author, while others, including Ralph Fiennes , Helena Bonham Carter , and Robbie Coltrane expressed support.

J.K. Rowling

Who Is J.K. Rowling?

J.K. Rowling, is a British author and screenwriter best known for her seven-book Harry Potter children's book series. The series has sold more than 500 million copies and was adapted into a blockbuster film franchise.

Rowling was born Joanne Rowling on July 31, 1965, in Yate, England. She adopted her pen name, J.K., incorporating her grandmother's name, Kathleen, for the latter initial (Rowling does not have a middle name).

While struggling to support her daughter Jessica and herself on welfare, Rowling worked on her first book in the Harry Potter series. The idea for the book reportedly occurred to her while she was traveling on a train from Manchester to London in 1990.

READ MORE: J.K. Rowling's Incredible Rags to Riches Story

'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone'

After a number of rejections, Rowling finally sold her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, for the equivalent of about $4,000; it hit shelves in June 1997. The word "Philosopher" in the book’s original title was changed to "Sorcerer" for its publication in America.

The book was the start of a seven-book series chronicling the life of the young wizard Harry Potter and his motley band of cohorts at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'

The second book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , came out in July 1998.

'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'

The third book in Rowling's series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , hit shelves in July 1999. By the following summer, the first three Harry Potter books had earned approximately $480 million in three years, with over 35 million copies in print in 35 languages.

'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'

The phenomenal response to Rowling's books culminated in July 2000, when the fourth volume in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , became the fastest-selling book in 24 hours ever. The book saw a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders of over 1.8 million.

'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'

After a postponed release date, the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , hit bookstores in June 2003.

'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'

The sixth installment, released in July 2005, sold 6.9 million copies in the United States in its first 24 hours. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the biggest opening in publishing history.

'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'

Prior to its July 2007 release, the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , was the largest ever pre-ordered book at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores and at Amazon.com. Rowling does not plan to write any more books in the series, although she has not entirely ruled out the possibility.

READ MORE: Harry Potter : The Real-Life Inspirations Behind J.K. Rowling's Characters

'The Tales of Beedle the Bard'

This collection of five fables mentioned in the Harry Potter book series, The Tales of Beedle the Bard , was released on December 4, 2008, at a tea party for 200 schoolchildren at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Rowling donated all royalties from the book to the Children's High Level Group (which has been renamed Lumos ), a charity that she co-founded to support institutionalized children in Eastern Europe.

'The Casual Vacancy'

Rowling's first book aimed at adults, The Casual Vacancy , was published in September 2012. The novel, a dark comedy about a local election in the small English town of Pagford, received mixed reviews.

A book review in The New York Times called the novel "disappointing" and "dull." A review in The Telegraph , however, gave the book three out of five stars, stating that “Jane Austen herself would admire the way [Rowling] shows the news of Barry’s death spreading like a virus round Pagford."

'Cuckoo Calling,' 'The Silkworm,' 'Career of Evil,' and 'Lethal White'

In April 2013, Rowling broke into a new genre, crime fiction, with a novel she published under the pen name Robert Galbraith. In the first few months following the release of Cuckoo Calling , the novel had modest sales and received positive reviews. Sales for the work skyrocketed in July when its author's identity was discovered.

According to Bloomberg News, Rowling said that "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name."

Rowling published three more books under the pen name Robert Galbraith: The Silkworm in June 2014 and Career of Evil , released in October 2015, followed by Lethal White in September 2018.

'Very Good Lives' (Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech)

In April 2015, Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech was published in book form as Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination .

The self-improvement guide offers personal anecdotes and advice on how to embrace failure and use your imagination to succeed. Proceeds from the book benefit Lumos, Rowling’s non-profit children’s organization.

‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’

In 2017, Rowling announced on her website that she would publish two new books for an exhibition at the British Library that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the publication of her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone .

The books, Harry Potter: A History of Magic (described as the adult version) and Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic (the kid-friendly version), were released on October 20th and feature manuscripts, original illustrations and an exploration of the Harry Potter characters and magic.

In May 2019, it was reported that Rowling would be publishing four more Harry Potter stories. However, the author cleared up the confusion on her website, explaining that the “bite-sized e-reads” contain no new material. The A Journey Through… e-books were adapted from a companion audiobook to History of Magic narrated by Natalie Dormer.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S J.K. ROWLING'S FACT CARD

'Harry Potter' Movies

A film version of Rowling’s first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , was released in November 2001 and was directed by Chris Columbus and starred Daniel Radcliffe , Emma Watson and Rupert Grint .

In its opening weekend in the U.S., the film debuted on a record 8,200 screens and smashed the previous box-office record, earning an estimated $93.5 million ($20 million more than the previous record-holder, 1999's The Lost World: Jurassic Park ). It ended the year as the top-grossing movie of 2001.

The second and third films in the series — Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), directed by Columbus, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), directed by Alfonso Cuarón — each enjoyed similar record-breaking box-office success. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , directed by Mike Newell, was released in 2005.

The fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , directed by David Yates, was released in 2007. The film featured a script by screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, who replaced Steve Kloves, scriptwriter of the first four films.

The film version of the sixth installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, directed by Yates, was released in July 2009. The final film for the seventh book in the series was released in two installments: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010) and Part 2 (2011), both directed by Yates .

'Fantastic Beasts' Film Series

In 2013, Rowling announced a new film series with Warner Bros. According to Entertainment Weekly , Rowling explained that the movies, based on her 2001 Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, would draw from "the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for 17 years," but "is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the 'Harry Potter' series, but an extension of the wizarding world."

Developed from a script by Rowling — her screenwriting debut — and starring Eddie Redmayne , Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was released in November 2016. Following in the footsteps of Rowling's previous creations that made it to the big screen, Fantastic Beasts dazzled audiences with its depictions of sorcery and grossed more than $800 million worldwide.

The film's sequel generated controversy ahead of its planned November 2018 release date for the decision to include Johnny Depp in the cast. During a time when influential Hollywood actors and executives were coming under fire for past indiscretions, fans were troubled by the allegations of domestic abuse that contributed to Depp's divorce from Amber Heard.

However, in late 2017, both Rowling and Warner Bros. issued statements in support of Depp. “The filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies,” said Rowling.

In 2014, Rowling published a short story about grown-up Harry Potter and a Hogwarts school reunion on her website Pottermore . Since the site launched, she’s added more stories and information about all things Harry Potter.

‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Play

In June 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , a two-part play written by Jack Thorne and based on an original idea by Thorne, Rowling and director John Tiffany, debuted on the London stage to a sold-out audience.

Although she had originally stated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be the final book in the series, the play features an adult Harry Potter and has been officially touted as the eighth installment of the series.

The play’s cast differs from that of the original films. The next month, as with her previous books, fans lined up at bookstores pending the midnight release of Jack Thorne’s script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child .

Husband and Children

On December 26, 2001, Rowling married anesthetist Dr. Neil Murray at the couple's home in Scotland. They have two children together, David (born in 2003) and Mackenzie (born in 2005). Rowling has one child, Jessica (born 1993), from her previous marriage.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: J.K. Rowling
• Birth Year: 1965
• Birth date: July 31, 1965
• Birth City: Yate, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: J.K. Rowling is the creator of the 'Harry Potter' fantasy series, one of the most popular book and film franchises in history.
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• University of Exeter
• St Michael's Primary School in Winterbourne
• Wyedean School and College
• Interesting Facts
• Before J.K. Rowling published her 'Harry Potter' series, she was a single mom on welfare.
• As of 2017, Rowling's net worth is about $850 million dollars.

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: J.K. Rowling Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/jk-rowling
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 29, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I still had a daughter that I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
• Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.
• Hopefully, after 'Harry,' I'll still be publishing. That's what I want.
• For a few years, I did feel I was on a psychic treadmill, trying to keep up with where I was. Everything changed so rapidly, so strangely. I knew no one who'd ever been in the public eye. I didn't know anyone—anyone—to whom I could turn and say, 'What do you do?' So it was incredibly disorienting.
• The worst that could happen is that everyone says, 'That's shockingly bad.'
• You don't expect the kind of problems wealth brings with it. You don't expect the pressure.
• Anything is possible if you've got enough nerve.
• To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
• Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

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J.K. Rowling acknowledges applause following the awarding of her honorary degree.

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Text of J.K. Rowling’s speech

J.K. Rowling

Copyright J.K. Rowling

‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’

Text as delivered.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

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However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives. Thank-you very much.

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J.K. Rowling writes essay on trans-activism and her fears about gender recognition laws

"I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe"

J.K. Rowling has written an essay to defend comments that led to her being accused of transphobia , and to explain why she felt the need to voice her opinions.

Last weekend the Harry Potter author criticised an article shared on Twitter for its use of the term “people who menstruate” instead of women.

Many claimed she was being transphobic because her comments suggested that you can only be classed as a woman if you menstruate. Rowling then proceeded to write a string of tweets claiming the push for trans rights would erase the concept of sex and, subsequently, the lived experience of women.

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In a new essay (read in full here ) the novelist has listed her reasons for supporting the concept of sex while also throwing her support behind trans people. She explained that she has done extensive research into gender identity over the past few years by meeting trans people and speaking to psychologists, doctors and social workers.

As someone who “struggled with severe OCD as a teenager” and to whom “the allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge”, Rowling revealed in the article that she may have considered transitioning to a male if the science had more accessible 30 years ago.

She noted: “The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition.”

Rowling added: “I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90 per cent of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.”

Later, Rowling highlighted a proposed law that had “triggered” her, citing the Scottish government’s consideration of introducing gender recognition legislation. “On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one.

“To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop.”

Elsewhere in the essay, Rowling explained her feelings on what she claims is the “erosion” of sex, saying that she finds counter-arguments to be “deeply misogynistic and regressive”.

“I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class.

She continued: “The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much. It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.”

Rowling’s essay comes after Daniel Radcliffe , Eddie Redmayne and King Princess denounced her comments made last weekend.

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J.K. Rowling talks in depth for the first time about her writing

J.K. Rowling is often asked questions by her fans about her writing process: from where she writes, to her inspiration, editing process and much more.

Here for the first time, she responds to those questions, talking openly and in depth about her writing including Harry Potter, The Ickabog and The Christmas Pig as well as writing as Robert Galbraith, the Cormoran Strike crime fiction series.

Watch the first episode here.

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Biography of J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Gloucestershire, England. Her parents, Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (née Volant), met during a train ride from King’s Cross Station to Scotland, where they both intended to join the Royal Navy. When Anne complained of being cold on the train, Peter offered to share his coat with her, and the couple was married a little more than a year later. After their marriage, Peter and Anne left the navy and moved to the outskirts of Bristol, where Anne gave birth to Joanne Rowling and, less than two years later, a second daughter, named Dianne.

When Rowling was four years old, the family moved to Winterbourne, a nearby village. Although the two sisters frequently fought, they were extremely close, and Rowling would amuse Dianne by telling her imaginative stories, many of which she would write down. These stories would inspire long, dramatic scenarios that were enacted during their playtime, with the girls playing all of the parts. During their time in Winterbourne, Rowling also became friendly with a brother and sister who lived across the street and had the last name of Potter, a name which Rowling admitted she liked much more than her own.

In 1974, when Rowling was nine years old, the family moved again, this time to the country village of Tutshill in Wales. Almost at the same time as the family’s move, Rowling suffered the loss of her favorite grandmother, Kathleen (whose name she would eventually add to her own to come up with the pen name, J.K. Rowling). She finished her primary school studies at St. Michael’s Primary School, whose benevolent headmaster, Alfred Dunn, would supposedly serve as the inspiration for Professor Dumbledore.

At the age of eleven, Rowling began studying at Wyedean Comprehensive School and College. Lacking any natural athletic ability and with few friends, the lonely Rowling dedicated herself to her studies and her love of literature. Her interest in literature and writing was fueled when her aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels . Rowling promptly read all of Mitford’s other books and became a huge fan of the author. Interestingly, Rowling has commented on her studious adolescence, saying “Hermione is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was 11, which I'm not particularly proud of.” Rowling also supposedly based another Harry Potter character on an individual from Wyedean: John Nettleship, the head of science during her time at the school, has acknowledged himself as the inspiration for the malignant Professor Snape.

Despite her problems at Wyedean, Rowling continued to foster a secret hope of becoming a writer throughout her adolescence. This hope was encouraged by her close school friend, Sean Harris, to whom she dedicated the second book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets . Rowling’s teenage years were also made more difficult when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In 1983, Rowling graduated from Wyedean and began attending Exeter University for her B.A. in French. Although Rowling wanted to study English, her parents convinced her that a career as a bilingual secretary would give her more stability than a job in literature could. After graduation, Rowling moved to London and began to work as a bilingual secretary for Amnesty International, an organization that campaigns against human rights abuses. Rowling admits that she was not a very good secretary; instead of taking notes during meetings, she would jot down story ideas.

During a train ride from London to Manchester in 1990, Rowling first came up with the idea of a young boy who does not know that he is a wizard. Too shy to ask any of the other passengers for a pen, Rowling kept the ideas in her mind until the train arrived in Manchester, and then she immediately began to work on the story. Shortly after this initial inspiration, Rowling’s mother finally succumbed to multiple sclerosis, dying in December of 1990. Her death was a huge blow to Rowling and would greatly influence the direction of the story about the young wizard and the loss of his parents.

Still devastated by her mother’s death, Rowling moved to Portugal in 1991 to work as an English teacher at a language institute. She brought her ever-growing book manuscript with her and, during her first week in Portugal, wrote the twelfth chapter of the book, “The Mirror of Erised.” While in Portugal, Rowling met and married a Portuguese journalist and gave birth to a daughter, Jessica, in 1993. However, the marriage was rocky, and, in December of 1993, Rowling returned to Britain with her daughter and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to be near her sister.

Unfortunately, in order to get a teaching position in Scotland, Rowling needed a postgraduate certification of education (PGCE), which required a year-long course of study. While unemployed and looking for a job, Rowling spent nearly every evening working on the book in local cafés while her daughter was asleep in her stroller.

After Rowling finished the book in 1995, she sent the first three chapters off to agents and began the course of study needed for the PGCE. The second agent that she contacted decided to take on the project and spent almost a year trying to find a publisher. The small Bloomsbury Children’s Books finally accepted the manuscript and published the book under the name Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in June 1997. Soon after its publication, Rowling’s book began to win numerous awards, including the British Book Award, the Nestle Smarties Book Prize, and the Children's Book Award.

Scholastic Press bought the American rights to the book (giving it the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ) and paid Rowling enough money to quit teaching and support herself solely by writing the next books in the Harry Potter series. The sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , was published in England in July 1998 and in America in June 1999, and the third book of the series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , was published in England in July 1999 and in America in September 1999.

These first three Harry Potter books took the three top spots on the New York Times Bestseller List and earned Rowling $400 million, promptly making her the richest author in the world. In 1998, Rowling sold the film rights to the Harry Potter series, and the first film in the franchise was released in 2001. Rowling completed the remaining four books in the Harry Potter series between 2000 and 2007, with the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , selling 15 million copies within the first twenty-four hours of its release.

In 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray, a British anesthetist, and gave birth to their son, David, in 2003 and their daughter, Mackenzie, in 2005. Since her completion of the Harry Potter series, Rowling has received honorary degrees from St. Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Exeter, and Harvard University, as well as the Légion d’honneur from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She is also an avid philanthropist and has donated much of her time and wealth to the Volant Charitable Trust, the charity One Parent Families, the Children’s High Level Group, and the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University.

Long after the novel series concluded, the Harry Potter world and franchise continues to grow with sites like Pottermore and the Fantastic Beasts films, which expand upon and create new apocryphal lore. Rowling has found herself at the center of controversy surrounding some of these new materials, including the creation of an American version of Hogwarts, Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that critics and scholars say completely disregards and disrespects indigenous populations and portrays colonialism in a favorable light. More recently, Rowling has been criticized over a tweet defending Maya Forstater, a researcher with a history of making anti-trans comments on social media. Rowling has since published a highly controversial essay on her personal website entitled, "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues," which has caused several Potter fan sites to distance themselves from the author.

Rowling has stated that she has no intention of continuing the Harry Potter series, but she has written The Tales of Beedle the Bard , a book of fairy tales mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , and has mentioned writing a definitive encyclopedia of Harry Potter's world.

Study Guides on Works by J.K. Rowling

The casual vacancy j.k. rowling.

When you are the author of one of the most successful children's fiction series of all time, deciding how to follow up on your success can be quite a dilemma. Fortunately, J.K. Rowling decided to commit to a number of "firsts" when she tackled the...

• Study Guide

The Christmas Pig J.K. Rowling

As part of her ongoing attempt to recapture that lightning in a bottle which made her a household name in millions of households around the globe with the publication of the original Harry Potter novel, J.K. Rowling published The Christmas Pig in...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets J.K. Rowling

British author J.K. Rowling said that the idea for the Harry Potter series “fell into her head” in 1990 while she was riding a train from Manchester to London without a pen to write it down. While she started to write it that evening, her progress...

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child J.K. Rowling , Jack Thorne , John Tiffany

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play written by playwright Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany, and based on an original story by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

The story begins nineteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts in the...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling

The Deathly Hallows is the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter franchise (excluding Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ) written by J. K. Rowling. It's a phenomenal conclusion to this epic saga and was published by Bloomsbury...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire is the fourth novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series. Harry Potter is a book series about a young wizard who is trying to defeat Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort is a powerful Dark wizard who has killed many...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth and penultimate novel of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series. The book series about a young wizard who is set to defeat a dark wizard named Lord Voldemort, who killed his parents when he was...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, written by J.K. Rowling. In this book, Harry struggles under the heavy responsibility to face the evil Lord Voldemort and save the people he loves most. It is...

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone tells the story of an eleven-year-old orphan who suddenly discovers that he is a wizard. J.K. Rowling began writing the book in 1990, prompted by a delayed train ride from Manchester to London during which she...

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third novel in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In this book, the saga continues as Harry is faced with dementors, the soul-sucking guards of Azkaban prison that bring icy depression into the...

Ickabog J.K. Rowling

Written for children between seven and nine (Rowling remarked that the book is a "political fairytale for slightly younger children"), The Ickabog tells the story of a fantasy land called Cornucopia, which is plagued by an evil creature known as...

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September 24

The Success Story of JK Rowling, The Dreamy Storyteller

This blog post is the success story of JK Rowling.

Some personalities like Abraham Lincoln struggled a lot since childhood. They might not have had a clear cut view of their future as a child. But their sheer will to persevere and prove their worth to the world made them do unfathomable deeds. On the other hand, personalities like Oprah Winfrey knew what they wanted to be, even as a child. Even when life threw garbage against them, they used it and built their own empire. 

JK Rowling is very much like Oprah Winfrey. Since she was a child, she wanted to be a writer. Her inborn talent was obvious to everyone around her. But despite that, she struggled a lot in life. 

At one point in time, as a single mother who depended on government welfare benefits, she struggled for survival. Yet, she overcame all those years of hardships and became the highest-paid British writer. Her Harry Potter books sold more than 500 million copies worldwide and became the best-selling book series of all time. Her books have been translated into 80 different languages. 

Read the story of the woman who helped millions of people forget their sorrows by boarding the Hogwarts express and traveling into the magical world. 

Our story begins in 1964  when teenagers Peter James Rowling and Anne Volant met on the train from King's Cross. They were both 18 years old.  Peter was in the navy , and Anne was in the women's branch of the UK's royal navy. Their destination was the headquarters of the 45 Commando in Arbroath, where they were stationed. They were both seated across each other in the same compartment. 

Even though it was their first meeting, they were both instantly attracted to each other. When Anne complained that it was cold, Peter, like a gentleman, offered his coat. Several hours later, when they got down in Scotland, they have already fallen in love. In a few months, they both quit the navy, got married in March the next year, and settled in Yate. Peter found a job as an apprentice engineer in a factory in Bristol, a town located ten miles from Yate. 

Four months later, on July 31st 1965, a girl was born. They named her Joanne, who would later become the famous JK Rowling. Two years later, their second child was born, and they named her Dianne.

Winterbourne

A year later, Joanne and her family moved to a new house in Winterbourne. Her parents filled their new house with books because both of them loved to read.

When she was four years old, Joanne got measles and had to stay in bed all day. To cheer her up, her father read out a children's novel called ' The Wind in the Willows .' This story of four animals - The mole, the rat, the toad, and the badger, became Joanne's earliest memory of books. This inspired Joanne to read other storybooks, which were spread around the house. 

Of all the children's stories she read, Joanne particularly loved the  stories of Richard Scarry, which often featured animals with human characteristics . Inspired by his books, she made up her own stories about imaginary creatures, which she told to her sister Dianne.  Joanne and her sister wanted a rabbit so badly . So, many of these early stories of Joanne focused on rabbits. The influence of this book on Joanne is also obvious in Harry Potter, in which animals and magical creatures are portrayed to be intelligent and come to the aid of Harry and his friends, when they are in dire situations.

The rabbit called Rabbit

When she was six years old, Joanne wrote her first story, which was again about a rabbit called Rabbit. In this story, the rabbit gets measles. So, his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee, visit him. From the moment she wrote this story,  Joanne had always wanted to be a writer . 

It is remarkable how her struggle during measles and her desire to own a rabbit helped her form a story. Even at such an early age, she started creating stories by blending reality and imagination, which many successful writers often do. 

When Joanne and her family moved to Winterbourne,  their mother became friends with their neighbor called Ruby Potter . Joanne, Dianne, Ruby's son Ian Potter and daughter Vikky Potter often played together. One of the many games they played was the game of Witches and Wizards. To play this game, which Joanne invented, the boys would dress up as wizards, and the girls would dress up as witches.  Thus, since an early age, Joanne had an interest in magic, which could have inspired her to write Harry Potter later.

Joanne liked her neighbors' family name Potter much more than her own family name. So, several years later, when she started writing the Harry Potter books, she named the protagonist Harry Potter. After all,  Potter is the family name that she liked the most, and Harry is the boy's name she liked the most . 

In 1974, when Joanne was nine years old, her family moved once again, this time to a town called Tutshill.  Joanne created several elements in the Harry Potter world based on her real-life experiences in this place . For starters, the old stone cottage in which they lived, has a cupboard under the stairs, much like the one in which Harry Potter lives. It also has a trapdoor that leads to a cellar, like the one that the three-headed dog guards in 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone.'  The Forest of Dean , near which Joanne's house was located, is where Harry and Hermione camp during their search of the Horcruxes. 

Second primary school

Even though Joanne used many elements of this house in the Harry Potter series, life there wasn't exactly a happy one. Her first day at her primary school was catastrophic. In a test organized by Slyvia Morgan, a teacher at that school, Joanne received only half a mark out of ten. As a result, she was made to sit with less intellectual students. Joanne, whom the teachers in her primary school in Winterbourne praised for her imagination and story-telling skills, couldn't take it lightly. She wanted to prove herself. So, she worked hard, got good marks, and was eventually made to sit with the highly intellectual students. But despite proving herself, Mrs.Sylvia Morgan still appeared strict and intimidating to Joanne. 

As a young girl, Joanne Rowling read so many books. She was also a know-it-all, pretty much like Hermione Granger. Indeed, she created Hermione Granger based on her 11-year old self. 

Secondary school

When she moved to secondary school, she was taught Chemistry by John Nettleship. He was a strict teacher. Joanne didn't particularly enjoy his classes. Even though Joanne was a brilliant student, in Nettleship's classes, she was more like Harry Potter in Snape's class, rather than Hermione. 

Indeed, Sylvia Morgan and John Nettleship affected Joanne's life so much that  she created Severus Snape based on them . 

The Lord of the Rings

B ut besides John Nettleship, at this age, Joanne Rowling had nothing to complain. At this age, Joanne was starting to read more books. During this time, she read 'Lord of the Rings' and fell in love with it. Even though she didn't use any characters from the Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings might have motivated her to create a story of her own.

After all,  the similarities between both the stories  are not easy to ignore. The protagonists in both stories are orphans living with their uncle or his family. In both stories, the plot begins on the birthdays of the protagonists. In both stories, the villains are extremely powerful beings who have lost power and seek to retain it. Moreover, both the villains can be killed only by destroying their source of power, either the ring or the Horcruxes. Gandalf, in Lord of the Rings, is an old, but strong man who is respected by his comrades and feared by his enemies. In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore holds a similar position.

Another book that Joanne fell in love with, during her teenage, was 'Emma,' written by Jane Austen. She read it more than 20 times. She also started liking pop music. Thus, Joanne was growing up to be a happy teenager. 

Anne's failing health

However, Joanne's life took a turn when she was 15 years old. Her mother was diagnosed with  Multiple Sclerosis . It is a disease in which one's own immune system attacks the fatty material around the nerve fibers. As a result, the nerves stop working properly. When this happens, the brain can't send signals to different parts of the body properly. Eventually, the victim becomes incapable of movement. Thus, the disease is a ticking time bomb.

When Joanne's family found out about her mother's disease, they were devastated. Joanne knew that her mother would be completely paralyzed one day. Looking at her mother suffering from this progressively destructive disease destroyed Joanne. But, she could only watch helplessly, because there is no cure for the disease. Knowing that her mother's days are numbered is the worst thing that could ever happen to any child. So, slowly, Joanne started to fall into depression.

Sean Harris and his car

But luckily, for Joanne, a knight came to save her from the depression. Even though he didn't ride a horse, he drove a car. To save her from the depression, a new pupil in her school, Sean Harris, often took Joanne for a ride in his blue Ford Anglia car. They went to concerts and bars to help Joanne forget about her sorrows. To Joanne, Sean's car became a symbol of hope that rescued her from depression. Like it came to Joanne's aid, in the second Harry Potter book, it comes to Harry and Ron's aid when the entrance to the platform 9 3/4 is blocked. 

Thus, Sean became a very close friend who also encouraged Joanne's secret desire to become a writer. Joanne never forgot what Sean did for her. So, she dedicated the second book in the Harry Potter series to him. 

An idea changes Joanne's life

The university of exeter.

Thanks to Sean, Joanne could focus on her studies once again. She wanted to get into Oxford. But even though she secured good grades, she couldn't get a place in Oxford or Cambridge. So, in 1982,  she started studying at the University of Exeter . Joanne wanted to study English. But her parents thought that a Bachelor's degree in a foreign language would give her the opportunity of working as a bilingual secretary. This would give her a stable job when compared to a job in literature. So, they convinced her to take up the Bachelor of Arts in French and Classics. 

At the university, she often borrowed books and read so much outside her syllabus. Once, she even ended up paying a fine of £50 to the University library for the overdue books. The additional reading didn't help her with the exams.  But it helped her come up with names for the spells in her Harry Potter books . 

After spending her third year in Paris teaching at a school, Joanne graduated in 1986. After graduating, Joanne started working as a bilingual secretary in London. Even though her work as a secretary was very important, she didn't like it. So, she never took notes during meetings. Instead, she just wrote down ideas for the two adult novels she was writing at that time. 

The train ride

In the summer of 1990, Joanne's boyfriend moved to Manchester. So, she decided to move to Manchester too. So, on a fine weekend, Joanne went to Manchester to find a place to stay. After hunting for flats, Joanne returned to London by train, which was delayed by four hours.  During the journey, suddenly, an idea surfaced in her mind  - The idea of a boy who didn't know that he could use magic until he got an invitation from a wizard school to study magic. Even though Joanne has always had a wild imagination, she had never been this excited by an idea before. So, after reaching Manchester, she immediately started working on the story. 

Anne Rowling passes away

But all her excitement and happiness of creating a new magical world was shortlived. A few months later, on December 30th, 1990, Anne Rowling passed away after fighting Multiple Sclerosis for ten years. Even though Joanne had gone home for Christmas, she didn't realize how ill her mother was. So, she didn't even tell her about Harry Potter. The loss of her mother, to whom Joanne was very attached all her life, affected her terribly. So, she used her own feelings of loss to describe how much Lily loved Harry and how much her death affected him. 

After several depressing months, Joanne found an advertisement in The Guardian to teach English as a foreign language in Portugal. The advertisement gave Joanne hope. So, looking for a fresh start, she decided to leave England and all the sorrows behind and move to Portugal. 

No man's land

Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal, was a busy city. When Joanne moved to Porto, she had to share her apartment with two other girls. The three girls who were working in the same school taught only from 5 pm to 10 pm. After their work, they often went to nightclubs. Since she had to teach only during the night, during the day, Joanne often went to coffee shops and started writing Harry Potter books while sipping a cup of coffee. 

First Marriage and first child

After 18 months of living a carefree life, she met Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist. Even though he was three years younger than her, they connected due to their shared interest in Jane Austin's books. Even though their relationship was passionate, they were both possessive and jealous. Moreover, the money Joanne earned was spent by Jorge to search for meaningful employment, which he couldn't find. Both these factors threatened to end their relationship. However, the tides turned when Joanne's first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Even though it was a sad moment, this brought them closer. So, in spite of the fact Joanne and Jorge had arguments often and her friends advised her to leave him, they got married on October 16th, 1992. 

Life after marriage wasn't so easy for Joanne. Jorge not only argued with Joanne but also physically abused her. Despite that, Joanne stayed with him because she wanted to make the marriage work. Meanwhile, Joanne got pregnant once again, and, on July 27th, 1993, their daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes was born. Despite Joanne's efforts, the marriage reached a dead end within a few months. On that fateful day, Jorge slapped Joanne and threw her out of their home. Joanne, who understood that their marriage had reached an end, returned with the police, took her daughter and left to the UK.

As poor as possible, without being homeless

Living on government welfare.

After returning to the UK, Joanne couldn't find a job. But she didn't want to trouble her sister and her husband, who let her stay with them. She couldn't stay with her father either because her father had remarried. So, she rented a small apartment and started living on government welfare. 

But the small apartment filled with rodents was not an ideal place for a baby to grow up. So, she started searching for a better apartment. But, nobody was willing to rent an apartment to a single mom living on government welfare.

After a long search, she found an unfurnished apartment. With the help of the money her old friend Sean Harris lent her, she was able to rent it. Her friends donated some of their furniture and helped her furnish it. Finally, she was in a better apartment. But even though she was in a better apartment now, Joanne wasn't happy. 

Depression and Dementors

Whenever she visited her friends' house, she would look at the dolls their children had. She compared it with Jessica's dolls, which could fit in a shoebox. This made her very sad. She understood that she didn't have enough money to provide for her daughter. Indeed,  she was living as poor as possible without being homeless . So, Joanne, who, as a kid, was similar to Hermione, came to see herself as a failure seven years after graduation. Moreover, she was often overcome by feelings of guilt for being a failed mother. So, she fell deep into depression and often wanted to kill herself. The depression she underwent during this time inspired her to create the dementors in the Harry Potter series. Her own feelings during this time helped her write how Harry feels when he meets a dementor.

But despite her depression, Joanne wanted to keep writing the Harry Potter books. But a crying baby and an apartment that reminded her of her failures did not provide a great atmosphere to get her creative juices flowing. She longed for the ambiance of a coffee shop. However, living on state benefits, she couldn't afford to spend money on coffee.

Nicholson's cafe

Luckily for her, her brother-in-law opened a coffee shop called Nicholson's cafe. Since she was family, they let her sit at the coffee shop for hours drinking a single cup of coffee. There, Joanne would write the Harry Potter books while rocking Jessica to sleep in her baby stroller. 

Meanwhile, her husband, Jorge, had come to the UK looking for her and their daughter. Scared, Joanne obtained an order of restraint against him and applied for a divorce. This forced Jorge to go back to Portugal. 

For several months, Joanne continued writing in coffee shops and typing on an old typewriter upon returning home. Finally, in 1995, five years after the idea of the boy who lived came to her mind, Joanne completed the manuscript for her first book.

Tides change

Christopher little literary agency.

Now that the first book was complete, the next step was to send a sample to literary agents. If a literary agent liked her book, they would send it to publications that would print the book and sell it. So, Joanne sent the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone to literary agents. But she never thought that her book will ever get accepted. So, she was overjoyed when the second literary agent she sent the book to,  Christopher Little Literary Agency , liked her book and asked for the rest of the chapters. 

A young reader in the agency had read the three chapters and liked it a lot. So, instead of throwing it away, because the agency didn't handle children's books, she and her colleague persuaded Christopher Little to sign up Rowling. Thus, the Christopher Little Literary Agency became the  literary representative of Joanne Rowling .

After signing a deal with Joanne,  the agency sent the 200-page script to various publishers . Most of them rejected it. Finally, after one year and 12 rejections, Bloomsbury publication agreed to publish it. They gave Joanne an advance of £1,500. 

Bloomsbury publication

When Bloomsbury's chairman, Barry Cunningham, gave the first chapter to his 8-year-old daughter to read,  she read the first chapter eagerly and demanded the next chapter immediately . 

Barry Cunningham knew Joanne's book would sell. But he did not think that Joanne can make considerable money out of it as it was a children's book. He believed that the adult audience will only like crime thrillers and romance novels, but not children's stories. So, he advised Joanne to get a full-time job. 

Heeding to Barry's advice, Joanne decided to become a teacher. But to become a teacher, she needed a Postgraduate degree. Therefore, she started pursuing a post-graduate degree in modern languages at Moray House, which is now part of Edinburgh University. She got her post-graduate degree a year later, in July 1996.

Publishing her first book

Bloomsbury anticipated that boys would not read a book written by a female author. So, they urged Joanne to choose a different pen name. They suggested her to pick a name with two initials. So, Joanne Rowling chose the name J. K. Rowling. J stands for Joanne, and K stands for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother. 

Meanwhile, JK Rowling applied to The Scottish Arts Council for a grant to help her write the second book. After reviewing her application, the council awarded her a grant of £8,000. 

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published 1000 copies of the first book in the UK. Initially, since both the author and the book were new, there wasn't much response from the general public. But the book got favorable reviews from leading magazines.  Moreover, within days of publishing the book, Scholastic, a children's book publisher, bid more than $100,000 for the publishing rights in the USA.  Scholastic renamed 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone' as 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone' to publish in the USA. This news spread like wildfire. This news and the rave reviews from leading magazines boosted the sales of the first Harry Potter book. 

The success story of JK Rowling

Surging popularity.

Five months later, the book won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize. This prize, awarded to the book which got the most votes from children and was written by a British author in the preceding year, stood testimony to Harry Potter's surging popularity in the UK. The book also won other prestigious awards, like The British book award for being the Children's book of the year and the Children's book award. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published in July 1998, also won the Smarties Prize. 

In 1998, Warner Bros. wanted to capitulate on the growing popularity of the Harry Potter books. So,  they paid a seven-figure sum and purchased the film rights to the first two Harry Potter stories .

J.K.Rowling in 1999 - By John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA - Author J. K. Rowlings , Link

By March 1999, the first two Harry Potter books had sold almost 300,000 copies each, in the UK alone . In December 1999, the third Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was published. It, too, won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize. This made JK Rowling the first author to win the award three times in a row. One year later, in July 2000, the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was published. But JK Rowling removed the book from the Smarties Prize competition to give other books a fair chance of winning the prize. 

Slowing down

All JK Rowling ever wanted was to be able to support herself and her daughter . However, by the year 2000, JK Rowling had become wealthy beyond her wildest imagination. But this popularity came at a cost. Unlike before, she couldn't decide when to write her next book. Once the first book became famous, she was forced to write the consequent books in subsequent years. The amount of pressure it produced was overwhelming for JK Rowling. So, after the fourth book was published, she slowed down and published her next book only three years later. 

In 2001, the first Harry Potter movie was released. It became an instant hit, grossing almost 1 billion dollars. It marked the beginning of a movie franchise,  which, as of 2019, is the third highest-grossing movie franchise . A month after the movie's release, she married Neil Murray, a Scottish doctor. Their son was born two years later. 

The sixth book was released in 2005, and the seventh book was released in 2007. Both these books broke sales records, selling 9 million copies and 11 million copies, respectively, within 24 hours of release. 

Even though the Harry Potter books made JK Rowling famous, they were not the only books she wrote.  In 2012, she published 'A Casual Vacancy,' a political story in a small British town . The book sold one million copies in three weeks. 

Other Books

In 2013, JK Rowling wrote a novel called 'The Cuckoo's Calling' under the pen name Robert Galbraith.  The novel was rejected by a few publishers . She later published the rejection letters on Twitter to serve as a motivation for budding writers. One of the rejection letters suggested that Galbraith should join a writers' group or writing course to get constructive criticism on his novel. The novel was eventually published and obtained great reviews. However, a family friend let loose that Robert Galbraith was actually JK Rowling. Soon, the sales of the book jumped 150,000%. As a result,  the book, which was in the 4709th position in Amazon, became the best-selling book of the year . Since then, she has written four more parts of the novel. 

Giving back

JK Rowling might be filthy rich now. But, even after becoming rich, JK Rowling didn't forgot her humble beginnings and the turmoils she went through. So, she wanted to help other people like her. Therefore, she contributed to several charities.  In 2003, she set aside a day a week for charity .

As her mother died due to Multiple Sclerosis, JK Rowling has contributed more than 25 million dollars to a center that treats the disease. She has also donated the profits from two of her books, 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' and 'Quidditch through the ages' to fight poverty in the UK and help children and young people in crises throughout the world.

In 2004, while reading Sunday Times, JK Rowling saw the picture of a boy in a caged bed in a Czech orphanage. It made her realize that children in orphanages are not properly taken care of. So,  she created an NGO to end the institutionalization of children . In 2010, it was renamed  Lumos , based on the light-generating spell in the Harry Potter books. Lumos and other organizations have convinced the European Commission to stop spending more than $367 million to build orphanages. Instead, this money was used to improve the livelihood of children by finding foster families for orphans and improving the family income of poor children who were sent to orphanages because their families couldn't afford to take care of them. 

J.K.Rowling in 2010 - By Daniel Ogren - Flickr : 100405_EasterEggRoll_683 , Link

Facts you probably didn't know

• The Harry Potter movies have grossed more than 9.1 billion dollars worldwide.
• Harry Potter books have been translated into 80 languages and sold more than 500 million copies, making Harry Potter the best-selling book series of all time.
• The boy's name that JK Rowling likes most is Harry. She likes it because it sounds happy. If her first child were a boy, she would have named him Harry. But then, the protagonist of her famous book wouldn't have been called Harry Potter.
• Little White Horse, a story JK Rowling read as a child, inspired her to write the Harry Potter books. 
• Whenever she got an idea regarding Harry Potter, she wrote them on small pieces of paper and stored them. While writing the books, she used these bits of paper to connect the dots.
• July 31st, Harry Potter's birthday, is also JK Rowling's birthday. 
• She wrote the last chapter of the last Harry Potter book sometime in 1990, five years before she finished the first Harry Potter book.
• In 2004, she became the first billion-dollar author and also one of the only self-made female billionaires . But she lost her status as a billionaire as she gave a lot of money to charities. 
• JK Rowling has won several awards for her Harry Potter books and her charitable works.
• Her sister Dianne was always the first one to listen to her stories. So,  she dedicated her first book  to her mother, Anne; her sister, Dianne; and her daughter, Jessica. 
• She dedicated her second book to her friend Sean Harris, who helped her get out of depression when her mother was ill and lent her money when she returned to the UK after a failed marriage.
• She finally came to terms with her father and dedicated her fourth book to him.

The Message

When you think that life is meaningless and you encounter failure after failure, read this success story of JK Rowling. JK Rowling decided to become an author when she was six years old. Yet, by the time the first Harry Potter book was published, she was 32 years old. In the 26 years it took for her dream to become a reality, she had worked various jobs she didn't like, got a Bachelor's degree in a subject her parents chose, her mother died, her father abandoned her, had a failed marriage, suffered from poverty, and fell deep into depression twice. But not once did she think of giving up on her dream. 

Her perseverance made her what she is today. After she became wealthy, she decided to give back a lot of her money to the world. She spent a lot of money on charities to help those in need. So, read this success story of JK Rowling when you want to give up. More importantly, never give up on your dreams and help others when you become successful.

If you liked this success story of JK Rowling, you might like the following biographies as well:

• Biography of Abraham Lincoln
• Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
• Albert Einstein, the Genius

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The life of J.K Rowling

Updated 17 April 2021

Subject Books ,  Writers

Downloads 91

Category Literature

Topic Book Review ,  Harry Potter ,  J. K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling's life and her masterpiece, Harry Potter

J.K. Rowling's life is expressed in her most famous piece of art, Harry Potter. In specific, the friendship between Rowling and the characters in her novel is publicly and subtly mirrored in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the characters and plots in the novel.

The World of Harry Potter

Rowling is the author of the world's best-seller series, "Harry Potter," an educational or creation novel where every book in the series ends in almost the same way; the fantasy of a hero meeting threats, dealing with trials, and experiencing successes and losses, defeating evil forces and reemerging triumphant. Despite the fact that she does not usually recognize her life and her work as she writes, she states that she often has to review her work in order to make sense of the origin of the stories she has input in her work (Rowling, 2010).

The Reflection of Rowling's Life in the Characters

In "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the characters, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all portray a significant aspect of the life of Rowling in a manner both intended and unintended. It is these similarities that bring out the emotional dimension that would otherwise not be apparent to the reader. Rowling states that she lived a life similar to that of Hermione during her childhood. She further admits that she had to achieve her goals and also had to be right all the time. According to her "By eleven, she may have been a bit Hermioneish" (Colbert).

Hermione is a non-pure blood Student at Hogwarts who is unaccustomed to the world of magic that is a common phenomenon to the other students whose parents are wizards and witches. For that reason, she compensates by focusing most of her energy on her studies, building her reputation for being a smart and knowledgeable girl who knew the answers to nearly every question, a "know-it-all." She indulges her bossy character on both Harry and Ron when they fail to finish their assignment but also offers help. Her industrious nature and loyalty trait make her a likable feature. Rowling reveals a dimension to the character portrayed by Hermione by relating the positive and negative traits into the personality of Hermione.

Connections to Rowling's Life by Chance or Deliberate?

Some of the similarities between Rowling's life and her work of art may have been established deliberately. However, there are traces of links that may have been established by chance. For instance, Rowling talks about how her high school friend imparted a vital role in the creation of Ron as a character. On the other hand, covert connections may be observed between Rowling and Ron, as Ron grows up in a loving and stable family as did the author. Ron is also poor, an experience that Rowling underwent as a single mother. This is observed in Ron's homemade sandwiches and the hand-me-down clothes that have an emotional impact on Rowling's life. In addition, the relationship between Rowling and Sean and how it is imparted to the characters illuminate some of the elements in the plot of the novel. Despite the fact that they are great friends, there is an undercurrent of some affection observed between Hermione and Ron. If Hermione is a reflection of Rowling and Ron a reflection of Sean, perhaps the affection for her friend may have had a role in influencing her decision to merge the two characters on the basis of her own experience and that of Sean. Although Harry embodies the ideologies of a classless and virtuous society, his ideal society can never exist. Human nature has and will always deny the emergence of a perfect society (Hand).

Resemblance and Emotional Accuracy

The resemblance portrayed between Rowling and her characters may be the major depiction of the emotional accuracy in the novel, particularly in some aspects of the novel that are concerned with death. Rowling and Harry both share the experience of losing their beloved parents. Rowling's mother passed away as she was working on her initial Harry Potter novel. According to her, this loss is reflected in the Mirror of Erised, the mirror that reveals the deepest desire of the viewer. Harry sees himself in the mirror, surrounded by his parents and relatives, all of whom died (Rowling, 1998). Rowling explains how she would have seen what Harry saw were it her before the mirror. She never disclosed to her mother about her work of art Harry Potter, and the Mirror of Erised is a clear reflection of her regret. Rowling's intention was for the mirror to symbolize her desire for her mother as it shows Harry's character longing for his family. Similarly, gazing in the mirror gives Harry a glimpse of how his life would have been had his parents been alive. Here, Rowling conveys the sense of wonder as a theme in the entire series of her work.

The Three-Dimensional Characters

Since Rowling has intertwined some of her personal experiences, such as her struggles, anxieties, and desires in her characters, the characters bring out a three-dimensional view. The world of Harry may not be real, conventionally speaking, but the experiences portrayed by the characters are true. Rowling's work ignites the reader's imagination such that the reader might face life in a creative manner.

Characterization is the most approached feature highlighted in the reviews as the most successful in her work. According to critics, what stands out in her work is Rowling's ability to establish engaging characters, a factor still strong in Rowling's post-Potter success (Hand). The magic of storytelling in Harry Potter resides in the innovative and creative use of the deeply embedded storytelling motifs originating from her personal experiences and her past life. Her ability to bring out a humane depiction in a fictitious world is indeed a unique combination of an enigmatic world and the real world to create an original and artistic creation.

Works Cited

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. First American edition. New York: Scholastic, 1998.

"Rowling, J.K." Biography Reference Bank (Bio Ref Bank) (2010): Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 09 Apr. 2017

Colbert, David. The magical worlds of Harry Potter: A treasury of myths, legends, and fascinating facts. Penguin, 2008.

Hand, Elizabeth. "Harry's Final Fantasy: Last Time's a Charm." The Washington Post 22 (2007). Web. 08 Apr. 2017

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J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling is the English novelist recognized worldwide as the creator of Harry Potter, the best selling series in history, "witch" created a huge cultural phenomena. It prompted torrents of young adults (and adults) to enjoy reading fiction, selling over 500 million copies. June, 2017, marked the 20th anniversary of the first book published, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" which sold over 120 million. Apparently she got the idea for the young wizard in 1990 while waiting on a stalled train between Manchester and London-- how's that for turning a travel delay into something productive?

The seven books were adapted into popular movies, with Rowling as principal screenwriter. She wrote the first book in 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , followed by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), and it seemed, her last in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). Rowling dappled in writing non-Harry Potter novels, such as The Casual Vacancy (2012), but no work could come anywhere close to her zenith of literary triumph with the Harry Potter series.

Much to the delight of her fans, Rowling recently released what's considered the eighth in her series, the script Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts I and II (2016), which was the first Harry Potter to be adapted into a play by Jack Thorne .

We feature Rowling in our Feminist Literature - Study Guide . Though her work is not yet in the public domain, we encourage you to read some of our great adventure and fantasy stories in The Children's Library .

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A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened.

The muted reaction to the Edinburgh Fringe show “TERF” suggests that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, offense can quickly vanish.

By Alex Marshall

Reporting from Edinburgh

There are more than 3,600 shows in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most will struggle to get even a single newspaper review. Yet for months before the festival opened on Friday, one play was the subject of intense global media attention: “TERF,” an 80-minute drama about J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, and her views on transgender women.

Before anybody had even read the script, a Scottish newspaper called the play, which imagines Rowling debating her views with the stars of the “Harry Potter” movies, a “foul-mouthed” attack on the author . An article in The Daily Telegraph said that “scores of actresses” had turned down the opportunity to play Rowling. And The Daily Mail, a tabloid, reported that the production had encountered trouble securing a venue .

On social media and women’s web forums, too, “TERF” stirred outraged discussion.

The uproar raised the specter of pro-Rowling protesters outside the show and prompted debate in Edinburgh, the city that Rowling has called home for more than 30 years. But when “TERF” opened last week, it barely provoked a whimper. The only disturbance to a performance on Monday in the ballroom of Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms came from a group of latecomers using a cellphone flashlight to find their seats. About 55 theatergoers watched the play in silence from the front few rows of the 350-seat capacity venue.

Given the regular disagreements between some feminists and transgender rights supporters, the uproar around “TERF” was not unexpected.

But the muted response to the show itself suggests that fewer British people are riled by the debate than the media coverage implies — or at least that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, outrage can quickly vanish.

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“The Fringe Benefits of Failure”

This speech was originally delivered as the commencement address at Harvard University on June 5, 2008. 1 The full title of this talk is “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”.

Speech Transcript

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very much.

This speech was originally published in The Havard Gazette .

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• All Speeches

• In My Own Words
• Younger Readers

Joanne Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 at Yate General Hospital near Bristol, and grew up in Gloucestershire in England and in Chepstow, Gwent, in south-east Wales.

Her father, Peter, was an aircraft engineer at the Rolls Royce factory in Bristol and her mother, Anne, was a science technician in the Chemistry department at Wyedean Comprehensive, where Jo herself went to school. Anne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Jo was a teenager and died in 1990, before the Harry Potter books were published.  Jo also has a younger sister, Di.

The young Jo grew up surrounded by books. “I lived for books,’’ she has said. “I was your basic common-or-garden bookworm, complete with freckles and National Health spectacles.”

Jo wanted to be a writer from an early age. She wrote her first book at the age of six – a story about a rabbit, called ‘Rabbit’. At just eleven, she wrote her first novel – about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them.

Jo studied at Exeter University, where she read so widely outside her French and Classics syllabus that she clocked up a fine of £50 for overdue books at the University library. Her knowledge of Classics would one day come in handy for creating the spells in the  Harry Potter  series, some of which are based on Latin.

Her course included a year in Paris. “I lived in Paris for a year as a student,” Jo tweeted after the 2015 terrorist attacks there. “It’s one of my favourite places on earth.”

After her degree, she moved to London and worked in a series of jobs, including one as a researcher at Amnesty International.  “There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them.” She said later.  “My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.”

Jo conceived the idea of  Harry Potter  in 1990 while sitting on a delayed train from Manchester to London King’s Cross. Over the next five years, she began to map out all seven books of the series. She wrote mostly in longhand and gradually built up a mass of notes, many of which were scribbled on odd scraps of paper.

Taking her notes with her, she moved to northern Portugal to teach English as a foreign language, married Jorge Arantes in 1992 and had a daughter, Jessica, in 1993. When the marriage ended later that year, she returned to the UK to live in Edinburgh, with  Jessica and  a suitcase containing the first three chapters of  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone .

In Edinburgh, Jo trained as a teacher and began teaching in the city’s schools, but she continued to write in every spare moment.

Having completed the full manuscript, she sent the first three chapters to a number of literary agents, one of whom wrote back asking to see the rest of it. She says it was “the best letter I had ever received in my life.”

The book was first published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books in June 1997, under the name J.K. Rowling.

The “K” stands for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother’s name. It was added at her publisher’s request, who thought a book by an obviously female author might not appeal to the target audience of young boys.

The book was published in the US by Scholastic under a different title (again at the publisher’s request), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , in 1998.  Six further titles followed in the Harry Potter series, each achieving record-breaking success.

In 2001, the film adaptation of the first book was released by Warner Bros., and was followed by six more book adaptations, concluding with the release of the eighth film,  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 , in 2011.

J.K. Rowling has also written two small companion volumes, which appear as the titles of Harry’s school books within the novels.  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them  and  Quidditch Through the Ages  were published in March 2001 in aid of Comic Relief.  In December 2008, a third companion volume, The Tales of Beedle the Bard  was published in aid of her international children’s charity, Lumos.

In 2012, J.K. Rowling’s digital company Pottermore was launched, which became Wizarding World Digital in 2019. Pottermore Publishing continues to be the global digital publisher of Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and the Wizarding World.  

Also in 2012, J.K. Rowling published her first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy  (Little, Brown), which has now been translated into 44 languages and was adapted for TV by the BBC in 2015.

Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, J.K. Rowling also writes crime novels, featuring private detective Cormoran Strike. The first of these, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was published to critical acclaim in 2013, at first without its author’s true identity being known.  The Silkworm followed in 2014, Career of Evil in 2015, Lethal White in 2018, Troubled Blood in 2020, The Ink Black Heart in 2022 and The Running Grave in 2023.  The series has also been adapted for television by the BBC and HBO.

J.K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech was published in 2015 as an illustrated book,  Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination  (Sphere), and sold in aid of Lumos and university-wide financial aid at Harvard.

In 2016, J.K. Rowling collaborated with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany on an original new story for the stage.  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two  opened in London and is now playing in multiple locations around the world.  The script book was published (Little, Brown) to mark the play’s opening in July 2016, and instantly topped the bestseller lists.

Also in 2016, J.K. Rowling made her screenwriting debut with the film  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them , a further extension of the Wizarding World, which was released to critical acclaim in November 2016.   This was the first in a series of new adventures featuring Magizoologist Newt Scamander and set before the time of Harry Potter. The second film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in 2018 and the third, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was released in 2022.

The screenplays were published to coincide with each film release:  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them The Original Screenplay (2016), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald The Original Screenplay (2018)  and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore The Complete Screenplay (2022) .

In May 2020, J.K. Rowling’s fairy tale for younger children, The Ickabog , was serialised for free online for children during the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, and is now published as a book illustrated by children, with her royalties going to her charitable trust Volant to benefit charities helping to alleviate social deprivation and assist vulnerable groups, particularly women and children.

Her latest children’s novel The Christmas Pig, a standalone adventure story about a boy’s love for his most treasured thing and how far he will go to find it, was published in 2021 and has been a bestseller in the UK, USA and Europe.

J.K. Rowling has been married to Dr Neil Murray since 2001. They live in Edinburgh with their son, David (born 2003) and daughter, Mackenzie (born 2005).

Honours & Awards

J.K. Rowling has received many honours and awards, including:

Companion of Honour, for services to literature and philanthropy, 2017 PEN America Literary Service Award, 2016 Freedom of the City of London, 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Denmark, 2010 Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur: France, 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award, British Book Awards, 2008 South Bank Show Award for Outstanding Achievement, 2008 James Joyce Award, University College Dublin, 2008 The Edinburgh Award, 2008 Commencement Day Speaker, Harvard University, USA, 2008 Blue Peter Gold Badge, 2007 WH Smith Fiction Award, 2004 Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, Spain, 2003 Order of the British Empire (OBE), 2001 Children’s Book of the Year, British Book Awards, 1998 and 1999 Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 1998 and 1999

The Volant Charitable Trust

J.K. Rowling is Founder and President of Lumos, an international children’s charity fighting for every child’s right to a family by transforming care systems around the world. Lumos sheds light on the root causes of family separation – poverty, conflict and discrimination – and demonstrates that children can safely be united with loving families that help them thrive.

Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic

The Anne Rowling Clinic was founded by a donation from J.K. Rowling in 2010 in memory of her mother Anne, who died in 1990 from complications related to multiple sclerosis.  The Clinic delivers clinical care and research to improve the lives of people with degenerative conditions affecting the brain, as well as hosting specialist NHS clinics for these conditions.  Jo continues to fund MS research exclusively through the Anne Rowling Clinic .

J.K. Rowling also supports a wide range of projects and organisations through her charitable trust, Volant, which she set up in 2000 to administer grants to charities, primarily in Scotland, which help alleviate social deprivation particularly affecting women and children.

In addition to donating directly, J.K. Rowling makes substantial donations to charity in the form of book royalties.  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages are sold in aid of Comic Relief and Lumos, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard is sold in aid of Lumos.

In 2020 J.K. Rowling announced that she is donating her royalties from her children’s book The Ickabog to Volant, to help support vulnerable groups who’ve been particularly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, in the UK and internationally.

Privacy Overview

Olympic Boxer Imane Khelif Is Neither Trans Nor Male

A short fight between algerian boxer imane khelif and italian boxer angela carini lead to a long and sustained bout of misinformation., alex kasprak, published aug. 5, 2024.

In early August 2024, an Algerian female boxer at the 2024 Paris Olympics named Imane Khelif was forced into American culture wars over allegations she was a man identifying as a woman to cheat her way to the top. The news cycle began after Khelif's unusually short victory over Italian boxer Angela Carini.

On Aug. 1, 2024,  Khelif faced Carini in an opening bout of the women's welterweight boxing tournament at the 2024 Games. Forty-six seconds into the bout, Carini ended the fight early after being punched a few times, delivering an unusual win to Khelif.

Carini later said she ended the fight due to severe nose pain following one of Khelif's blows. Video showed her sobbing after her loss and not shaking Khelif's hand when offered to her. "I have never felt a punch like this," she said after the fight.

Anti-trans activists and social media pundits immediately painted this fight as an example of the alleged unfairness and danger of allowing trans women to fight against those assigned female at birth. 

The author J.K. Rowling, for example, described the match on X as "a young female boxer" having "everything she's worked and trained for snatched away because [the International Olympic Committee] allowed a male to get in the ring with her."

The virulently anti-trans X account Libs of TikTok also weighed in , describing Khelif as "a man … being allowed to compete in women's Olympic boxing in Paris."

Former U.S. President Donald Trump chimed in as well, describing Khelif as "a person that transitioned": 

The problem with these arguments was Khelif is neither trans nor male. She was born, and has lived her entire life, as a female. The sanctioned International Boxing Association (IBA) alleged in a confidential report she did not meet the World Boxing Championship requirements for female competition in 2023, despite having competed as a woman in that same competition for many years prior, winning silver in 2022.

Khelif's eligibility was challenged only after she beat a Russian opponent to advance to the World Championship quarterfinal round in 2023. The IBA was once recognized by the IOC as the official governing body for boxing — but that title was rescinded in April 2023 following, among other things, allegations of corruption and ties to Russian money . As a result, the IOC, not the IBA, sets the rules for Olympic women's boxing.

Who is Imane Khelif?

Khelif is an Algerian boxer who has competed, as a woman, at the international level for years. She has always identified as a woman, and as a UNICEF ambassador has discussed the role that being a young girl in a tiny rural village has had on her development as a boxer:

When Imane Khelif, 24, one of Algeria's top female boxers is asked what achievements she is most proud of, she says, "It's being able to overcome the obstacles in my life." Imane recalls how at 16 she managed to excel in football in her rural village in Tiaret in western Algeria despite football not being seen as a game fit for girls. Moreover, the boys in her village felt threatened and picked fights with her. Ironically it was her ability to dodge the boys' punches that got her into boxing.

She came in 17th at the 2018 IBA World Boxing Championships and 33rd in the 2019 IBA World Boxing Championships. She represented Algeria in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In those games, she lost to the tournament's bronze medalist, Ireland's Kellie Harrington. Her presence did not generate any controversy. She went on to win silver in the 2022 World Boxing Championships.

What Happened in 2023?

Khelif also competed in the 2023 IBA World Championships in New Delhi — that is, until she beat a Russian boxer. On March 22, 2023, Khelif " dominated " Russian boxer Amineva Azalia with a 4-1 victory, securing her a position in the quarterfinals scheduled to begin a few days later.

On March 24, however, the IBA disqualified Khelif, suggesting a "failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women's competition." In 2023, the head of the IBA told the Russian news agency TASS that DNA tests had "proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded from the sports events." XY chromosomes are typically associated with males.

Responding to controversy a year later, however, the IBA more generally claimed that Khelif was "subject to [a] … recognized test" but that "the specifics remain confidential." The IOC had suggested the 2023 disqualification was due to her testosterone level, but the IBA pushed back on that claim.

Can Women Have XY Chromosomes or Elevated Testosterone?

Gender testing for women's sports remains controversial . The rationale is that the process of going through puberty as a male imparts significant physical advantages over females that could make competition between the sexes dangerous. The controversy, historically at least, has largely been over how these tests should work and how to handle cases complicated by the natural genetic diversity of human life.

There are genetic conditions, termed differences of sexual development, in which biological females are born with XY chromosomes but possess female anatomy, or that affect how a biological female regulates and reacts to testosterone, causing levels typically associated with males. Though there is no independent confirmation that Khelif has these conditions, people born this way would legally be considered female or intersex.

Debates over these issues in the context of women's sports have nothing to do with a purported "woke" or "trans agenda," because such instances involve women who were born as women, identify as women and have not undergone any sex reassignment surgery or procedure to change this fact. That is what IOC spokesperson Mark Adams meant when he clarified to the press "this is not a transgender issue."

Gender-reassignment procedures require significant financial and medical resources. The notion that a woman from a rural western Algerian village who sold scrap metal to support her boxing career would have had the ability to undergo such a procedure in a deeply conservative Muslim country that prohibits the practice is extremely unlikely , at best.

IOC Responds

On Aug. 1, 2024, the day Khelif defeated Carini, the IOC released a statement defending both Khelif and another boxer facing similar accusations, Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting:

We have seen in reports misleading information about two female athletes competing at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. The two athletes have been competing in international boxing competitions for many years in the women's category, including the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, International Boxing Association (IBA) World Championships and IBA-sanctioned tournaments. … The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years. Such an approach is contrary to good governance. Eligibility rules should not be changed during ongoing competition, and any rule change must follow appropriate processes and should be based on scientific evidence.

The IOC stated that both boxers have met the IOC eligibility requirements for competition as a woman in boxing.

Angela Carini Was Not Making a Political Statement

Social media accounts falsely attempting to make this story about transgender athletes attempted to paint a sorrowful picture of Carini's loss, describing her dreams as having been crushed by a man pretending to be a woman and suggesting that photos of the fight and of Carini's tearful reaction evoked images of domestic violence . Carini's tears and her not shaking Khelif's hand were used to support this narrative.

But according to The Associated Press, Carini was not making a political statement at all, and did not intend to refuse to shake Khelif's hand:

"All this controversy makes me sad," Carini said. "I'm sorry for my opponent, too. … If the IOC said she can fight, I respect that decision." Carini was apologetic for not shaking Khelif's hand after the bout. "It wasn't something I intended to do," Carini said. "Actually, I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don't have anything against Khelif. Actually, if I were to meet her again I would embrace her."

It is not uncommon for athletes of any gender to shed tears after losing a shot at a medal in the Olympic Games, nor is it uncommon for a punch to the head from an Olympic boxer to cause pain. Boxing is a sport in which two people try to punch each other hard enough to cause a knockout.

Bottom Line

The only purported evidence for the claim that Khelif is trans comes from an undisclosed test performed by an allegedly corrupt sports governing body that may have shown she has a DSD condition. The IOC has said Khelif meets its requirements for participation, with Adams, the IOC spokesman, specifically clarifying , "This is not a transgender issue."

Because Khelif is not transgender, claims attempting to make her victory against Carini an issue about transgender rights or "woke" politics are without basis.

Snopes reporter Jordan Liles contributed to this report.

"Algeria Boxer Imane Khelif Wins First Olympic Fight When Opponent Angela Carini Quits." AP News, 1 Aug. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-boxing-gender-4b6eb881cce9c34484d30c68ad979127.

Boxing/Women's World Championships (Day 6): Algerian Imane Khelif Secures Her Ticket to the Quarter-Finals. https://al24news.com/fr/boxe-championnats-du-monde-feminin-6e-journee-lalgerienne-imane-khelif-valide-son-billet-pour-les-quarts-de-finale/. Accessed 2 Aug. 2024.

"Childhood of Boxer Imane Khelif as She Faces Accusations of Being 'Biological Male.'" The Independent, 2 Aug. 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/imane-khelif-olympics-boxer-trans-debate-gender-carini-b2590229.html.

Ewing, Lori. "Explainer: Olympics-DSD Rules in Focus in Women's Boxing." Reuters, 31 July 2024. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/sports/olympics/olympics-dsd-rules-focus-womens-boxing-2024-07-31/.

"Joint Paris 2024 Boxing Unit/IOC Statement." Olympics.Com, 1 Aug. 2024, https://olympics.com/ioc/news/joint-paris-2024-boxing-unit-ioc-statement.

"Lin Yu-Ting and Imane Khelif: Boxers Cleared for Paris Olympics." BBC Sport, 30 July 2024, https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/c4ngr93d9pgo.

Newsweek. Olympics Officials Make It "Absolutely Clear" On Women Boxers Controversy. 2024. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0do8voeKFNY.

"Olympic Association Calls for Successor to Run Boxing's Global Duties after Excluding IBA." BBC Sport, 9 Apr. 2024. www.bbc.com, https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/68773451.

"Statement Made by the International Boxing Association Regarding Athletes Disqualifications in World Boxing Championships 2023." IBA, 31 July 2024, https://www.iba.sport/news/statement-made-by-the-international-boxing-association-regarding-athletes-disqualifications-in-world-boxing-championships-2023.

Tokyo 2020: Harrington Guarantees Medal with Khelif Win. Aug. 2021. www.rte.ie, https://www.rte.ie/sport/olympics/2021/0803/1238700-tokyo-2020-harrington-guarantees-medal-with-khelif-win/.

"Who Is Italian Boxer Angela Carini and Why Did She Quit Her Fight against Imane Khelif?" AP News, 2 Aug. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/angela-carini-imane-khelif-boxing-63e9dbaa30f1e29196d4162c72c2babf.

By Alex Kasprak

Alex Kasprak is an investigative journalist and science writer reporting on scientific misinformation, online fraud, and financial crime.

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