Joanne Rowling ( born 31 July 1965 )
The life cycle 124875
Important years of life
2003 5
2008 1
2009 2
2011 4
2015 8
2023 7
2030 5
2035 1
2036 2
2038 4
2042 8
2050 7
2057 5
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On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Murray (born 30 June 1971), a Scottish doctor, in a private ceremony at her home, Killiechassie House, near Aberfeldy.
Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003.
Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she ceased working on the novel to care for David in his early infancy.
Rowling is a friend of Sarah Brown, wife of former prime minister Gordon Brown, whom she met when they collaborated on a charitable project. When Sarah Brown’s son Fraser was born in 2003, Rowling was one of the first to visit her in hospital
… In 2003, Rowling took part in a campaign to establish a national standard of care for MS sufferers.
… In 2008, Rowling agreed to publish the book with the proceeds going to Lumos.
…In May 2008, bookseller Waterstones asked Rowling and 12 other writers (Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, Lisa Appignanesi, Margaret Atwood, Lauren Child, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Michael Rosen, Axel Scheffler, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh) to compose a short piece of their own choosing on a single A5 card, which would then be sold at auction in aid of the charities Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling’s contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel that concerns Harry’s father, James Potter, and godfather, Sirius Black, and takes place three years before Harry was born. The cards were collated and sold for
charity in book form in August 2008…
Rowling is known for her leftist political views. In September 2008, on the eve of the Labour Party Conference, Rowling announced that she had donated £1 million to the Labour Party, and publicly endorsed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over Conservative challenger David Cameron, praising Labour’s policies on child poverty. Rowling is a close friend of Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon Brown, whom she met when they collaborated on a charitable project for One Parent Families.
Rowling discussed the 2008 United States presidential election with the Spanish-language newspaper El País in February 2008, stating that the election would have a profound effect on the rest of the world. She also said that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be “extraordinary” in the White House. In the same interview, Rowling identified Robert F. Kennedy as her hero…
Rowling has received honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Exeter which she attended, the University of Aberdeen and Harvard University, for whom she spoke at the 2008 commencement ceremony…
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July 2009
… In April 2009, she announced that she was withdrawing her support for Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland, citing her inability to resolve an ongoing feud between the organisation’s
northern and southern branches that had sapped morale and led to several resignations…
In 2009 Rowling was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy
…Warner Bros. filmed the final instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in two segments, with part one being released on 19 November 2010 and part two being released on 15 July 2011. Yates directed both films…
Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise
In June 2011, Rowling announced that future Harry Potter projects, and all electronic downloads, would be concentrated in a new website, called Pottermore. The site includes 18,000 words of information on characters, places and objects in the Harry Potter universe
In July 2011, Rowling parted company with her agent, Christopher Little, moving to a new agency founded by one of his staff, Neil Blair.
In 2015, Rowling stated on Galbraith’s website that the third Cormoran Strike novel would include “an insane amount of planning, the most I have done for any book I have written so far. I have colour-coded spreadsheets so I can keep a track of where I am going.” On 24 April 2015, Rowling announced that work on the third book was completed. Titled Career of Evil, it was released on 20 October 2015 in the United States, and on 22 October 2015 in the United Kingdom
In October 2015, Rowling announced via Pottermore, that a two part play she had co-authored with playwrights Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, was the ‘eighth Harry Potter story’ and that it would focus on the life of Harry Potter’s youngest son Albus after the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On 28 October 2015, the first round of tickets went on sale and sold out in several hours.
On 22 October 2015 a letter was published in The Guardian signed by Rowling (along with over 150 other figures from arts and politics) opposing the cultural boycott of Israel, and announcing the creation of a network for dialogue, called Culture for Coexistence.
In 2015, following the referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland, Rowling joked that if Ireland legalized same-sex marriage, Dumbledore and Gandalf could get married there.The Westboro Baptist Church, in response, stated that if the two got married, they would picket. Rowling responded by saying “Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls.”