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WCW: J.K. Rowling


Hello Lovelies!

So this is another feature that I'm going to try to do this year. Women Crush Wednesday--52 fantastic female authors, one each Wednesday. 

Some people might say, but so many of the authors in YA literature are women, what makes them so special? And to that I would say,  I disagree with the premise of your question. But also, major media prefers to focus on men, and will usually only write about women when their books become sensations (Stephanie Meyers, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins, etc.). I want to focus on all the female authors that I love. I know that there is no why I'll hit them all with a mere 52 weeks, so I'm hoping this is a feature I can continue until I get sick of blogging (I'm hoping that'll never happen).

As my first TBT post was on Harry Potter, it seemed only suitable that my first WCW post be on J.K. Rowling. 


For those few people who somehow don't know the backstory of the infamous J. K. Rowling, let me lay it out for you.

Rowling spent a tough 7 years writing the first Harry Potter book. She was living in poverty as a single mother. She received 12 rejections for the manuscript, and even after it was finally accepted, was encouraged to get a day job as she could never make money writing children's books. Her net worth was most recently cited at $1,000,000,000 (that's a billion dollars. Like real people money. Take that, haters.)

The Harry Potter series is by far her most popular work, but she has also written three novels for adults: The Casual Vacancy under her own name and two mystery novels (The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm) under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. 

(If you still aren't convinced about Women Crush Wednesday, let me point out that she shifted to using J.K. because her publishers said her books wouldn't sell with a feminine name, and her other pseudonym also indicates masculinity. Double standards are insidious and ridiculous.)

Rowling donates and helps run many charities. Most focus on children in some way (literacy with Lumos, one parent families with Gingerbread) but she also has close ties to research and treatment of multiple sclerosis, from which her mother died in the early 90s. 

Rowling is writing the script for at least the first Newt Scamander movie, of which there will be three. She also has plans for a young middle grade novel.



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