In an interview (above) with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, author JK Rowling revealed that she had written a fairytale, but wasn’t sure whether she would ever publish it.
Heartbreaking? A little. The theme on her 50th birthday, which she celebrated on Halloween, was: “Come as your private nightmare”. So she dressed as...a lost manuscript. “And I wrote over a dress most of that book...I don’t know whether it will ever be published, but it’s actually hanging in a wardrobe currently,” she told Amanpour.
The veteran journalist recently interviewed Rowling about her charitable organisation Lumos, named after a light-giving spell in the Harry Potter series.
Rowling founded Lumos in 2005 to fight the rampant institutionalisation of children. She was deeply moved when she saw, in a newspaper, a picture of a young boy on a baby cot trapped inside cage-like netting in a tiny space.
It roused her worst fears, of feeling trapped and powerless, which prompted her to start Lumos and reach out to as many children across the world as possible.
Rowling also talked about feeling glad that she had a “pen name” – her initials – which wasn’t by choice, but at her publisher’s urging in order to disguise her gender. She didn’t agree with the reason, but being terribly keen to be finally published, she went with it. As she jokingly said, “If they told me to call myself Rupert, I would have done it!” But now, she feels it allows her to have an identity distinct from her private life.
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