Author & Philanthropist
Joanne Rowling CH OBE FRSL, born 31 July 1965), also known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote Harry Potter, a seven-volume children’s fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. The series has sold over 500 million copies, been translated into at least 70 languages, and spawned a global media franchise including films and video games. The Casual Vacancy (2012) was her first novel for adults. She writes Cormoran Strike, an ongoing crime fiction series, as Robert Galbraith…
Support/Subscribe/Follow:
It all started with a photograph in a newspaper. When, in June 2004, J.K. Rowling saw the black and white image of a small boy – isolated, locked away from the world, far from his family and placed in an institution – she couldn’t look away.
That newspaper article was the first step towards J.K. Rowling co-founding the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG) with Baroness Emma Nicholson MEP. CHLG became Lumos, dedicated to working towards ending the systematic institutionalisation of children worldwide. Baroness Nicholson has not played any part in Lumos since 2010.
Starting in Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, in 2006, Lumos has worked across the European region, from the Czech Republic to Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia and Greece. In 2014, we expanded our work into the USA and Haiti…
JK Rowling works her magic again
She has launched a new feminist revolution
JULIE BINDEL – December 12, 2022 – Unherd
The launch of a sexual assault support centre for women is always good news but, when it is the brainchild of J.K. Rowling, it is very big news. Especially given the feminist philanthropist and world famous author has smartly taken pre-emptive steps to outwit her detractors.
Rowling has funded and designed a new, women-only sexual violence support service, Beira’s Place, which opens today. “I founded Beira’s Place to provide what I believe is currently an unmet need for women in the Lothians area,” the author said this weekend. “As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I know how important it is that survivors have the option of women-centred and women-delivered care at such a vulnerable time. Beira’s Place will offer an increase in capacity for services in the area and will, I hope, enable more women to process and recover from their trauma.”…
An Exclusive Interview with JK Rowling about her New Project
SUZANNE MOORE – 12 December 2022 – Letters from Suzanne
When J. K. Rowling tells you she has something up her sleeve that she wants to show you – a brand new project that no one knows about – it’s worth getting on a train to Edinburgh for. Is she branching out into a completely new genre? Is she giving up writing? Is she emigrating?
I have no idea.
The Jo I know slightly has both a huge public presence and a well-protected private life. She said she wanted to sit down and talk about feminism one-to-one, because we never have. So, over coffee and biscuits, we did just that.
“Let’s talk for a while,” she said, “and then I will show you what I have been up to.”
From the moment I had heard her say that we were living through the most misogynistic period of her lifetime, I wanted to know what she meant,
“If you’d have shown me when I was 18 what young girls would be dealing with now – what we’d all be dealing with, but particularly young girls – I would have been horrified. Because when you’re 18, you assume this can only get better – like, we’ve got these rights and we’ve got all these amazing women doing feminist analysis, and it will change, it really will change. By the time I’m my mother’s age, I thought, my daughters will have it so much easier.
“But now I think we’ve gone backwards. I think we’re living through a nightmare.” …
What did J.K. Rowling say, exactly?
By Abby Gardner – November 28, 2022 – GLAMOUR
A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy
..”.On June 6, 2020, Rowling retweeted an op-ed piece that discussed “people who menstruate,” apparently taking issue with the fact that the story did not use the word women. “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” she wrote…”
J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues
This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.
For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.
My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.
All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began….