The J.K. Rowling Index

List of all J.K. Rowling's writings.

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Work Category: Writing

J.K. Rowling introduces The Ickabog

non fiction new website ickabog

Index ID: ICKBINTRO — Publication date: May 26th, 2020

Note: Introduction to her new story, published on her official website.

About The Ickabog

The idea for The Ickabog came to me while I was still writing Harry Potter. I wrote most of a first draft in fits and starts between Potter books, intending to publish it after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

However, after the last Potter book I wanted to take a break from publishing, which ended up lasting five years. In that time I wrote The Casual Vacancy and Robert Galbraith wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling. After some dithering (and also after my long-suffering agent had trademarked The Ickabog – sorry, Neil) I decided I wanted to step away from children’s books for a while. At that point, the first draft of The Ickabog went up into the attic, where it’s remained for nearly a decade. Over time I came to think of it as a story that belonged to my two younger children, because I’d read it to them in the evenings when they were little, which has always been a happy family memory.

A few weeks ago at dinner, I tentatively mooted the idea of getting The Ickabog down from the attic and publishing it for free, for children in lockdown. My now teenagers were touchingly enthusiastic, so downstairs came the very dusty box, and for the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again. As I worked to finish the book, I started reading chapters nightly to the family again. This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my writing life, as The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny, and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed).

I think The Ickabog lends itself well to serialisation because it was written as a read-aloud book (unconsciously shaped, I think, by the way I read it to my own children), but it’s suitable for 7-9 year olds to read to themselves.

I’ll be posting a chapter (or two, or three) every weekday between 26th May and 10th July on The Ickabog website. We plan to publish some translations soon and will post further details on that website when they’re available.

The Ickabog is a story about truth and the abuse of power.  To forestall one obvious question: the idea came to me well over a decade ago, so it isn’t intended to be read as a response to anything that’s happening in the world right now. The themes are timeless and could apply to any era or any country.

The Illustration Competition

Having decided to publish, I thought how wonderful it would be if children in lockdown, or otherwise needing distraction during the strange and difficult time we’re passing through, illustrated the story for me. There will be suggestions about the illustrations we might need for each chapter on The Ickabog website, but nobody should feel constrained by these ideas. I want to see imaginations run wild! Creativity, inventiveness and effort are the most important things: we aren’t necessarily looking for the most technical skill!

In November 2020, The Ickabog will be published in English in print, eBook and audiobook formats, shortly followed by other languages. The best drawings in each territory will be included in the finished books. As publishers in each territory will need to decide which pictures work best for their own editions, I won’t be personally judging the entries. However, if parents and guardians post their children’s drawing on Twitter using the hashtag #TheIckabog, I’ll be able to share and comment!  To find out more about the Illustration Competition, go to The Ickabog website when it launches.

Covid-19 Donation

I’m pledging all author royalties from The Ickabog, when published, to help groups who’ve been particularly impacted by the pandemic. Further details will be available later in the year.

Huge thanks are due…

… to my dear friend and editor Arthur Levine; to the phenomenal James McKnight of the Blair Partnership, who’s worked tirelessly to make this project a reality in a very short space of time; to Ruth Alltimes at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, whose help has been invaluable; to my peerless management team, Rebecca Salt, Nicky Stonehill and Mark Hutchinson and to my wonderful agent Neil Blair. I promise all of you not to have any more bright ideas for a few months at least.

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The Ickabog – Welcome message

non fiction ickabog

Index ID: ICKBWEL — Publication date: May 26th, 2020

Welcome!

You’ve arrived at the website of my new story, The Ickabog.

I had the idea for The Ickabog a long time ago and read it to my two younger children chapter by chapter each night while I was working on it. However, when the time came to publish it, I decided to put out a book for adults instead, which is how The Ickabog ended up in the attic. I became busy with other things, and even though I loved the story, over the years I came to think of it as something that was just for my own children.

Then this lockdown happened. It’s been very hard on children, in particular, so I brought The Ickabog down from the attic, read it for the first time in years, rewrote bits of it and then read it to my children again. They told me to put back in some bits they’d liked when they were little, and here we are!

The Ickabog will be published for free on this website, in instalments, over the next seven weeks, a chapter (or two, or three), at a time. It isn’t Harry Potter and it doesn’t include magic. This is an entirely different story.

The most exciting part, for me, at least, is that I’d like you to illustrate The Ickabog for me. Every day, I’ll be making suggestions for what you might like to draw. You can enter the official competition being run by my publishers, for the chance to have your artwork included in a printed version of the book due out later this year. I’ll be giving suggestions as to what to draw as we go along, but you should let your imagination run wild.

I won’t be judging the competition. Each publisher will decide what works best for their editions. However, if you, your parent or your guardian would like to share your artwork on Twitter using the hashtag #TheIckabog, I’ll be able to see it and maybe share and comment on it!

When the book is published in November, I’m going to donate all my royalties to help people who have been affected by the coronavirus. We’ll give full details later in the year.

I think that’s everything you need to know. I hope you enjoy reading it and I can’t wait to see your pictures!

Love,

J.K. Rowling

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Reply for Hetta

non fiction letter

Index ID: HETTA — Publication date: April 3rd, 2020

Note: This letter was shared on Twitter to a fan who wrote a letter to J.K. Rowling during the self-isolation days due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This is the tweet: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1246119184569942016/

Dear Hetta,

Thank you for saying that you like my books!

I didn’t mind calling myself “J.K.”. You see, I’d always been sorry my parents didn’t give me a middle name, so I got to call myself Kathleen after my favourite grandmother!

Lots of love,

Jo

also known as
J.K. Rowling

The following images are related to this writing

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The next JK Rowling may need help from an arts programme

twitter thread

Index ID: NXTJKR — Publication date: March 29th, 2020

Note: It was published as a Twitter thread on J.K. Rowling's official account: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1244250277928144896

As I keep being tagged into this ongoing debate, so I’m going to weigh in. It’s accurate to say that if Britain hadn’t had a welfare programme, my eldest daughter and I would have been in desperate trouble. I understand you’re not contesting that. However, you also seem to be asserting that I never benefited from government support as an artist. This is inaccurate. I received a grant from a government supported arts programme that enabled me to finish my second book.

In times like these, and speaking as somebody who has several key workers in her immediate family, I can see why some people might regard artists, writers etc as about as much use as Cacofonix the Bard on the battlefield (Asterix reference, if you haven’t read it, do). However, even in wartime, filmmakers, writers and performers were supported by government to do the necessary work of improving morale and providing people with a necessary means of escape and respite. Art is unique to humanity and it bolsters our humanity.

The priority right now is saving lives, but I felt obliged to point out that I *did* receive government assistance through an arts programme. One of the many reasons I feel strongly that people like me should pay their full share of taxes is that the next JK Rowling may need help from an arts programme, too, and I wouldn’t want her to be unable to fulfil her potential because the money wasn’t there. Art matters, even in terrible times. Books have always been my greatest refuge and I know I’m not alone.

PS Sorry for the two 4s. I’m a writer. I can’t count.

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The Strange Tale of J.K. Rowling and the Bengal Tiger Reserve

non fiction new website rumours

Index ID: BENTIG — Publication date: February 18th, 2020

Even by Wizarding World standards, this one is bizarre.  Rumours were recently circulating that J.K. Rowling was collaborating on, or even writing, a book called What’s Left of the Jungle Book, based on the exploits of a guide at a West Bengal tiger reserve in India.  It turns out the rumour was the result of a chain of misunderstandings, mistranslations and over-eager speculation between a group of students, the reserve guide and a potential publisher.  J.K. Rowling has not arranged to meet the guide in California, has never visited the Buxa Tiger Reserve, and has no plans to base any work – fact or fiction – on this subject.

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Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Human Rights Award 2019 – Acceptance Speech

speech award

Index ID: RFKAS — Publication date: December 12th, 2019

I’m disappointed, I was told I’d meet some Kennedies!

You should know that among the British, being forced to watch a film in which people say how great you are is actually considered cruel and inhumane treatment. We are a people of the firm handshake. If we’re feeling particularly effusive we may say ‘Well done’, but that’s generally followed by something like ‘You bastard’. In case the recipient becomes inappropriately giddy.

And so I am feeling very shaken, honestly, and I’m going to try and express why I feel so emotional about this award. And I’m going to try and do that quite briefly because no one wants to hear from Nancy Pelosi more than I do.

So, briefly then, on the top floor of my house in Edinburgh is a framed poster from Robert Kennedy’s presidential run. And I bought it from a memorabilia store in DC during my first ever Harry Potter tour in the states. And I bought it of course because Robert Kennedy has been, since my teens, one of my greatest heroes. We overlapped on this earth for only three years. So I know him by his legacy, and by the many biographies I’ve read.

Robert Kennedy embodied everything I most admire in a human being. He was morally and physically courageous. And like Churchill, I believe that courage is the foremost of the virtues because it guarantees all the others. He looked beyond the invisible, that powerful boundaries that can insulate people of privilege from the rest of the world. And he looked into those dark corners where poverty and discrimination and injustice breed. He was a man of empathy and action. And he brought about real change, and he continues to inspire people beyond the boundaries of his own country. And I’m not sure we can ask much more of any politician or indeed any human being.

Having said all of that, I do understand the very human desire not to go poking into too many dark corners. As you’ve just seen on the film, I experienced that feeling myself when I saw a picture of a small child screaming through wire in a British news paper. And I went to turn the page. Now, I’m not usually very good with dates or counting, as anyone who would like to check the shifting numbers of house elves at Hogwarts can confirm, but I always know exactly how long ago it was that I saw that picture because I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, and she turns fifteen this January. I was very ashamed of my impulse, and so I turned back and I thought, ‘If it’s as bad as it looks, you have to do something about it’. And I read the accompanying article, which was by an undercover reporter, and it was bad. And so I knew I had to do something about it. And I began writing letters. And then I met many experts in the field. And that lead to the founding of my NGO Lumos, which aims to end child institutionalisation.

I think it isn’t widely enough understood, as Roger said on the film, that 80% of the children living in so called orphanages worldwide has at least one living parent. Research shows us that even well run institutions have catastrophic effects on child health and development. Statistics show us that one in five will have a criminal record, one in seven will enter the sex trade, and one in ten will kill themselves. We know that many institutions are hotbeds of abuse. And we understand that parents are pressured, and sometimes even tricked, into giving up their children on the promise of food, healthcare, and education that they know isn’t available anywhere else in their communities. Now I’ve often been asked why this issue, and my answer is there are few people on earth more vulnerable than a child who’s been taken from their family and hidden from mainstream society. I’ve now met children with attachment disorders so severe that they will crawl into the lap of any stranger who smiles at them. I’ve seen profoundly ill children lying three in a bed with minimal human contact, and no stimulation. And I’ve stood in roomfulls of babies who’ve learnt not to cry.

Now, there is good news, believe it or not. And the good news is that this is an entirely man made problem, and we can fix it. That is good news. We have to have hope here. And it is fixable, as long as we have the individual and the political will. Incredibly it is cheaper to support children in their own family than it is to warehouse them in this way. And most importantly of all. The outcomes for children are hugely improved if they’re brought up in loving family care. And that include foster care. And we can all make small changes to bring about that outcome by making sure we never donate to so called orphanages and we don’t volunteer in them. So I’m very, very proud and grateful to all of our incredible Lumos staff around the world. We’re now providing support on deinstitutionalisation to 50 countries globally. And we’ve so far helped just under 50,000 children directly. Either moving them from institutions into loving families, often their own, or preventing them entering the institution in the first place. And I cover all core costs of Lumos, so all donations go directly to programs that help children.

Can I just say, this speech is full of typos, so whoever got it on the silent auction, send it to me and I’ll copy edit it for you. It’s really annoying me as I read through. Anyway. I’m nearly there.

I didn’t know the sex of the baby I was carrying when I first read about that cage child, but I did know that if it was a boy, I would name him Robert, after Robert Kennedy. And in fact she became Mackenzie and I became Robert. When I was thinking up a pen name for the crime series that has been one of the great joys of my writing life I took the name Robert Galbraith in tribute to my political hero. So I’m currently just a few pages away from completing JK’s thirteenth and Robert’s fifth novel. And if I hadn’t come to New York to accept this award I would have finished it this week. And I should say that I enter a state that can best be described as feral when I’m in the final stages of a book, so one of the many extraordinary things about this evening is that I’m standing in front of you not looking like a cave dwelling hermit. And for this my husband thanks you. So I just want to say thank you. This truly is one of the most extraordinary honours I could have possibly been given, and I shouldn’t ask for anything else while I’m standing here, but I will. If you would like to know more about how to help some of the worlds most vulnerable children, please visit wearelumos.org.

Thank you.

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Foreword: Finding the Way Home

lumos foreword

Index ID: FWFWH — Publication date: November 2019

Note: J.K. Rowling's Lumos Foundation has been working to help children in orphanages for nearly 15 years. "Finding the Way Home" is a documentary about childrens in orpanaghes. For the film premiere, a booklet of the movie was given to present press, and Rowling collaborated writing the foreword for it.
I do not have this text in our archive. If you do have it, please send me an e-mail to [email protected]. Thank you!

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Contribution: A love letter to Europe

letter contribution

Index ID: LLEU — Publication date: October 31st, 2019

Note: Contribution for the book "A love letter to Europe", published by Coronet Books.

The letter was written on thin, pale blue paper. The handwriting was neat and rounded. My brand-new German pen friend, Hanna, introduced herself in excellent English. Our schools had decided that Hanna and I would be a good fit as pen pals because we were both, not to put too fine a point on it, swots. In a matter of months, I’d be going to stay with her Stuttgart-based family for a week, and shortly after that, she’d come and stay on the Welsh border, with me. I was 13. The whole thing was thrilling.

Her house was warm, spotless and deliciously different. I remember ornamental candles, and rugs on a tiled floor, the furniture sleek and well-designed, and a shining upright piano in the corner, which Hanna, of course, played very well. On arrival, Hanna’s mother asked me what I wanted for breakfast, and when I didn’t immediately answer, she began listing all the foodstuffs she had available. Around about item six or seven, I recognised the German for cake, so I said, “Cake, please.”

Hanna’s mother was a magnificent cook. I particularly remember the clear soup with dumplings and the sausage with lentils, and every morning of my visit, presumably because she thought that’s what I was used to, she gave me cake for breakfast. It was glorious.

I kept in touch with Hanna for years, and when I was 15, the family invited me, with incredible generosity, to accompany them on a month-long trip to Italy. So, it was with Hanna and her family that I first saw the Mediterranean and first tasted shellfish.

I came home from Italy thirsty for more European adventures. I got myself a French pen pal called Adele, with whom in due course I went to stay in Brittany. There I watched her mother make crêpes, the region’s speciality, on the bilig, a large, circular griddle: they were the most delicious things I’d ever eaten, even including the Italian lobster. When out of sight of adults, I took advantage of the cheapness of French cigarettes and practised my nascent smoking habit, trying really hard to like Gitanes, and almost succeeding.

When I turned 16, my best friend and I cooked up the idea of going backpacking in Austria for a couple of weeks. Looking back, I do slightly wonder what our parents were thinking, letting us go: two schoolgirls with a smattering of German heading off on a coach with no fixed plans and no accommodation booked. We emerged from the experience unscathed: we successfully read the foreign train timetables, always managed to find accommodation, swam in ice-cold mountain lakes under brilliant sunlight and travelled from town to town as the fancy took us.

As I grew older, my determination to cross the Channel, even if alone or with insufficient funds, grew. If you had an Interrail ticket, surely one of the best inventions of all time, you could simply catch another train if you couldn’t find a room, or else doze in the station until the next one arrived. I took off alone at 19 to wander around France, a jaunt that ended abruptly with the theft of my wallet.

However, I was soon back again, because I spent a year in Paris as part of my French degree. My mother, a quiet Francophile with a half-French father, was delighted to visit me there; my father, possibly less so, given my perennially unsuccessful pleas to waiters to understand that bien cuit in his case meant there must be no pink at all in the middle of the steak.

I was 25 when my mother died, at which point I stopped pretending I wanted any kind of office job. Now I did what came most naturally: grabbed the dog-eared manuscript of the children’s book I’d been writing for a few months and took off across the Channel again. Disorientated with grief, I’d chosen one of the three teaching jobs offered to me almost at random. It was in Portugal, a country I didn’t know, and where I couldn’t speak a word of the language.

Teaching English abroad is a perfectly respectable profession, but nobody who has done it can deny that it attracts its fair share of misfits and runaways. I was both. Nevertheless, I fell in love with Porto and I love it still. I was enchanted by fado, the melancholy folk music that reflects the Portuguese themselves, who in my experience had a quietness and gentleness unique among Latin peoples I’d encountered so far. The city’s spectacular bridges, its vertiginous riverbanks, steep with ancient buildings, the old port houses, the wide squares: I was entranced by them all.

We all have shining memories of our youth, made poignant because they’re freighted with knowledge of what happened later to companions, and what lay ahead for ourselves. Back then we were allowed to roam freely across Europe in a way that shaped and enriched us, while benefiting from the longest uninterrupted spell of peace this continent has ever known. Lifelong friendships, love affairs and marriages could never have happened. Several children of my acquaintance, including my own eldest daughter, wouldn’t have been born without the frictionless travel the EU gave us.

At the time of writing, it’s uncertain whether the next generation will enjoy the freedoms we had. Those of us who know exactly how deep a loss that is, are experiencing a vicarious sense of bereavement, on top of our own dismay at the threatened rupture of old ties.

I think again of my teenage pen friend Hanna, as I reach for a quotation by Voltaire. She rarely let me get away with anything, so she’d probably have accused me of choosing a French philosopher in a spirit of pure provocation.

Well, Hanna was right about many things, but on this she’d be wrong. The truth is that I’m thinking of her now because she was my first friend from continental Europe, and because the words of Voltaire that hold so much meaning for me now are these: “L’amitié est la patrie.” “Where there is friendship, there is our homeland.” And Hanna, I really don’t want to lose my homeland.

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Letter to Australian production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

letter

Index ID: AUSCC — Publication date: February 24th, 2019

Note: J.K. Rowling wrote this letter to the Australian production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She was not present when it was shared, but producer Sonia Friedman read it for the whole cast and crew. You can watch a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grxXwNpZaq4

Dear everyone involved in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Melbourne,

Thank you for all your incredible work. Thank you to the company and creative team who’ve done such a magnificent job. John’s kept me up to date with everything that’s been going on-. And I swear, if I could Apparate, I’d be there on the opening night. One of these days I’ll turn up, I’m sure.

In the meantime, hugest congratulations on your opening at the Princess Theatre. My heart is in Oz tonight.

With love,

J.K. Rowling.

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On Writing

new website non fiction

Index ID: OW — Publication date: January 6th, 2019

Q. Do you have tips for others trying to write?

A: I have to say that I can’t stand lists of ‘must do’s’, whether in life or in writing. Something rebels in me when I’m told what I have to do before I’m fifty, or have to buy this season, or have to write if I want to be a success.

Ten Habits All Best-Selling Writers Have In Common. These Five Tips Will Transform Your Writing! Follow J.K. Rowling’s Golden Rules For Success!

I haven’t got ten rules that guarantee success, although I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process. Male protagonists are unfashionable. Boarding schools are anathema. No kids book should be longer than 45,000 words.

So forget the ‘must do’s’ and concentrate on the ‘you probably won’t get far withouts’, which are:

Reading

This is especially for younger writers. You can’t be a good writer without being a devoted reader. Reading is the best way of analysing what makes a good book. Notice what works and what doesn’t, what you enjoyed and why. At first you’ll probably imitate your favourite writers, but that’s a good way to learn. After a while, you’ll find your own distinctive voice.

Discipline

Moments of pure inspiration are glorious, but most of a writer’s life is, to adapt the old cliché, about perspiration rather than inspiration. Sometimes you have to write even when the muse isn’t cooperating.

Resilience and humility

These go hand-in-hand, because rejection and criticism are part of a writer’s life. Informed feedback is useful and necessary, but some of the greatest writers were rejected multiple times. Being able to pick yourself up and keep going is invaluable if you’re to survive your work being publicly assessed. The harshest critic is often inside your own head. These days I can usually calm that particular critic down by feeding her a biscuit and giving her a break, although in the early days I sometimes had to take a week off before she’d take a more kindly view of the work in progress. Part of the reason there were seven years between having the idea for Philosopher’s Stone and getting it published, was that I kept putting the manuscript away for months at a time, convinced it was rubbish.

Courage

Fear of failure is the saddest reason on earth not to do what you were meant to do. I finally found the courage to start submitting my first book to agents and publishers at a time when I felt a conspicuous failure. Only then did I decide that I was going to try this one thing that I always suspected I could do, and, if it didn’t work out, well, I’d faced worse and survived.

Ultimately, wouldn’t you rather be the person who actually finished the project you’re dreaming about, rather than the one who talks about ‘always having wanted to’?

Independence

By this, I mean resisting the pressure to think you have to follow all the Top Ten Tips religiously, which these days take the form not just of online lists, but of entire books promising to tell you how to write a bestseller/what you MUST do to be published/how to make a million dollars from writing.

I often recommend a website called Writer Beware (https://accrispin.blogspot.com) to new and aspiring writers. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone who’s trying to decide what might be useful, what’s worth paying for and what should be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of scams out there that didn’t exist when I started out, especially online.

Ultimately, in writing as in life, your job is to do the best you can, improving your own inherent limitations where possible, learning as much as you can and accepting that perfect works of art are only slightly less rare than perfect human beings. I’ve often taken comfort from Robert Benchley’s words: ‘It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up, because by that time I was too famous.’

 

Q. What do you love most about the writing life?

A: I can’t answer this without sounding melodramatic. The truth is that I can’t really separate a ‘writing life’ from ‘life.’ It’s more of a need than a love. I suppose I must spend most of my conscious life in fictional worlds, which some people may find sad, as though there must be something lacking in my external life. There really isn’t! I’m a happy person, by and large, with a family I adore and quite a few activities I enjoy. It’s just that I have other worlds in my head that I often slip in and out of and I don’t really know how it would feel to live any other way.

 

Q. What does it feel like having your work scrutinised? 

A: Having your work scrutinised is an inevitable concomitant of being a professional writer. I never dreamed that there would be a fandom the size of Harry Potter’s picking over the books. It’s staggering and wonderful. Given that I’m fairly obsessive myself, these are kindred spirits.

I could have spent literally every hour of every day discussing Potter characters, plot twists and theories with fans over the last ten years, but as I want to work on new things, I don’t give in to this temptation that frequently.

I miss the days when readings and events were slightly more low key.  I’m not complaining, but when audiences grow big you obviously can’t reach everyone who wants to ask you a question. Being able to engage with people on Twitter goes some way to solving this for me.  It’s astounding that people are still so interested in those books, and I doubt I’ll ever stop interacting as long as there are readers who know the world so well.

I’m in a new phase with the fandom right now, because I’m working within the wizarding world again, on Fantastic Beasts. Once again, I’m balancing wanting to interact with fans, with not being able to answer certain questions fully, because we’re only two films into a five film series. It’s a nice problem to have, though.

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