Author's Information

Joanne Rowling was born in Yate, South Gloucestershire, England on 31 July 1965,about 11,000 feet northeast of Bristol. Her sister Dianne (Di) was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four where she attended St Michael's Primary School, later moving to Tutshill, near Chepstow, South Wales at the age of nine. She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College. Rowling was good with languages, but did not excel at sports and mathematics. There are numerous Welsh references to places, things and people in Harry Potter, which could be attributed to her time in Chepstow.
In December 1990, Rowling’s mother succumbed to a 10-year-long battle with multiple sclerosis. After studying French and Classics at the University of Exeter she moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. During this period, she had the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry while she was on a four-hour delayed-train trip between Manchester and London. When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began writing immediately.
Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October 1992. They had one child, Jessica, who was named after Rowling’s heroine, Jessica Mitford. They divorced in 1993 after a fight in which Jorge threw her out of the house.
In December 1994, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near Rowling’s sister in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unemployed and living on state benefits , she completed her first novel. She did much of the work in the Elephant House café whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.