Anti-poverty and children's welfare
Rowling, once a single parent herself, is now president of the charity Gingerbread (originally One Parent Families), having already become their first Ambassador in 2000.[135][136] Rowling collaborated with Sarah Brown to write a book of children's stories to aid One Parent Families.[137]
In 2001, the UK anti-poverty fundraiser Comic Relief asked three best-selling British authors – cookery writer and TV presenter Delia Smith, Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding, and Rowling – to submit booklets related to their most famous works for publication.[138] Rowling's two booklets, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, are ostensibly facsimiles of books found in the Hogwarts library. Since going on sale in March 2001, the books have raised £15.7 million ($30 million) for the fund. The £10.8 million ($20 million) they have raised outside the UK have been channelled into a newly created International Fund for Children and Young People in Crisis.[139]
In 2005, Rowling and MEP Emma Nicholson founded the Children's High Level Group (now Lumos).[140] In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to highlight the use of caged beds in mental institutions for children.[141] To further support the CHLG, Rowling auctioned one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a series of fairy tales referred to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was purchased for £1.95 million by on-line bookseller Amazon.com on 13 December 2007, becoming the most expensive modern book ever sold at auction.[142][143] Rowling commented, "This will mean so much to children in desperate need of help. It means Christmas has come early to me."[143][144] Rowling gave away the remaining six copies to those who have a close connection with the Harry Potter books.[143] In 2008, Rowling agreed to publish the book with the proceeds going to the Children's High Level Group.[142] On 1 June 2010 (International Children's Day), Lumos launched an annual initiative – Light a Birthday Candle for Lumos. To support the campaign on 1 June 2011, JK Rowling gave an interview to Redonline.co.uk
In July 2012, Rowling was featured at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London where she read the opening lines of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan as part of a tribute to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. An inflatable representation of Lord Voldemort and other children's literary characters accompanied her reading.[145]
Multiple sclerosis
Rowling has contributed money and support for research and treatment of multiple sclerosis, from which her mother suffered before her death in 1990. In 2006, Rowling contributed a substantial sum toward the creation of a new Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, later named the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.[146] In 2010 she donated a further £10 million to the centre.[147] For reasons unknown, Scotland, Rowling's country of adoption, has the highest rate of multiple sclerosis in the world.[148] In 2003, Rowling took part in a campaign to establish a national standard of care for MS sufferers.[149] In April 2009, she announced that she was withdrawing her support for Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland, citing her inability to resolve an ongoing feud between the organisation's northern and southern branches that had sapped morale and led to several resignations.[149]
Other philanthropic work
In May 2008, bookseller Waterstones asked Rowling and 12 other writers (Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, Lisa Appignanesi, Margaret Atwood, Lauren Child, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Michael Rosen, Axel Scheffler, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh) to compose a short piece of their own choosing on a single A5 card, which would then be sold at auction in aid of the charities Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling's contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel that concerns Harry's father, James Potter, and godfather, Sirius Black, and takes place three years before Harry was born.[150][151] The cards were collected together and sold for charity in book form in August 2008.[151]
On 1 and 2 August 2006 she read alongside Stephen King and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Profits from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity that aids artists and performers left uninsurable and unable to work, and the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières.[152] In May 2007, Rowling pledged a donation reported as over £250,000 or over $495,000 to a reward fund started by the tabloid News of the World for the safe return of a young British girl, Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal.[153] Rowling, along with Nelson Mandela, Al Gore, and Alan Greenspan, wrote an introduction to a collection of Gordon Brown's speeches, the proceeds of which are donated to the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory.[154]
Rowling is a supporter of The Shannon Trust, which runs the Toe by Toe Reading Plan and the Shannon Reading Plan in prisons across Britain, helping and giving tutoring to prisoners who cannot read.[155]
Political views
See also: Politics of Harry Potter
In September 2008, on the eve of the Labour Party Conference, Rowling announced that she had donated £1 million to the Labour Party, and publicly endorsed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over Tory challenger David Cameron, saying in a statement:
I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party. Gordon Brown has consistently prioritised and introduced measures that will save as many children as possible from a life lacking in opportunity or choice. The Labour government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and is one of the leading EU countries in combating child poverty. David Cameron's promise of tax perks for the married, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent. It sends the message that the Conservatives still believe a childless, dual-income, but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat in difficult times.[156]
Rowling is a close friend of Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon Brown, whom she met when they collaborated on a charitable project (see above). When Brown's son Fraser was born in 2003, Rowling was one of the first to visit her in the hospital.[157]
Rowling discussed the 2008 United States presidential election with the Spanish-language newspaper El País. She said she was obsessed with the United States elections because they would have a profound effect on the rest of the world. In February 2008, she said that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be "extraordinary" in the White House. In the same interview, she also said her hero was Robert F. Kennedy.[158]
In April 2010, Rowling published an article in The Times in which she heavily criticised Cameron's plan to encourage married couples to stay together by offering them a £150 annual tax credit.
Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say "it's not the money, it's the message". When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron's only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is "get married, and we'll give you £150", he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation. How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life's necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3 am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message – would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?[159]
Religious views
Main article: Religious debates over the Harry Potter series
Over the years, some religious people have decried Rowling's books for supposedly promoting witchcraft; however, Rowling identifies as a Christian. She attended a Church of Scotland congregation while writing Harry Potter and her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised there.[160] "I go to church myself", she says, "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion".[161] She once said, "I believe in God, not magic."[162] Early on she felt that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs, they would be able to "guess what is coming in the books."[163]
In 2007, Rowling described her religious background in an interview with the Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant:[164]
I was officially raised in the Church of England, but I was actually more of a freak in my family. We didn't talk about religion in our home. My father didn't believe in anything, neither did my sister. My mother would incidentally visit the church, but mostly during Christmas. And I was immensely curious. From when I was 13, 14 I went to church alone. I found it very interesting what was being said there, and I believed in it. When I went to university, I became more critical. I got more annoyed with the smugness of religious people and I went to church less and less. Now I'm at the point where I started: yes, I believe. And yes, I go to the church. A Protestant church here in Edinburgh. My husband is also raised Protestant, but he comes from a very strict Scottish group. One where they couldn't sing and talk.
Rowling has occasionally expressed ambivalence about her religious faith. In a 2006 interview with Tatler magazine, Rowling noted that, "like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes about if my faith will return. It's important to me."[21] In a British documentary, JK Rowling: A Year in the Life, when asked if she believed in God, she said, "Yes. I do struggle with it; I couldn't pretend that I'm not doubt-ridden about a lot of things and that would be one of them but I would say yes." When asked if she believed in an afterlife, she said, "Yes; I think I do."[165] She further said, "It's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."[166] In a 2008 interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, Rowling said, "I feel very drawn to religion, but at the same time I feel a lot of uncertainty. I live in a state of spiritual flux. I believe in the permanence of the soul."[167] In an interview with the Today Show in July 2007, she said, "...until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on... would give away a lot of what was coming. So... yes, my belief and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book."[168]
Legal disputes
Main article: Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series
Rowling, her publishers, and Time Warner, the owner of the rights to the Harry Potter films, have taken numerous legal actions to protect their copyright. The worldwide popularity of the Harry Potter series has led to the appearance of a number of locally produced, unauthorised sequels and other derivative works, sparking efforts to ban or contain them.[169]
Another area of legal dispute involves a series of injunctions obtained by Rowling and her publishers to prohibit anyone from reading her books before their official release date.[170] The injunction drew fire from civil liberties and free speech campaigners and sparked debates over the "right to read".[171][172]