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.”
Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling. After Harry Potter, the author chose crime fiction for her next books, a genre she has always loved as a reader. She wanted to write a contemporary whodunit, with a credible back story. Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series is classic contemporary crime fiction from a master story-teller, rich in plot, characterisation and detail. Galbraith's debut into crime fiction garnered acclaim amongst critics and crime fans alike. The seven novels in the series so far, The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil ( 2015), Lethal White (2018), Troubled Blood (2020), The Ink Black Heart (2022) and The Running Grave (2023) all topped the national and international bestseller lists. The series has also been adapted for television by the BBC and HBO.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of novels, published between 1997 and 2007, have become the biggest sellers in the history of children's writing. She founded the children's charity 'Lumos', which aims to end the institutionalisation of children in orphanages worldwide. The author has received several awards and nominations over the span of the Harry Potter series.
J.K. Rowling Fun Facts
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