Saturday, May 3, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Rowling named Best Entertainer
Rowling named Best Entertainer
HARRY POTTER creator JK Rowling has topped the list of 2007’s top Entertainers.
THE MYSTERIOUS TICKING NOISE is the Best Comedy Video in YouTube Based on Harry Potter Characters
Puppets, racism & safari videos top best list
“In 2007, the YouTube community showed the world that there’s something for everyone on the site,” said YouTube manager of community Mia Quagliarello.
“This year’s YouTube Video Award winners not only include entertainers, they include those who served as a mouthpiece for everyday people, those who inspired and those who informed.”
Awards were given in a dozen categories, ranging from music, sports and comedy to instructional, political, and “adorable.”
US graduate student Tay Zonday won in the music category for “Chocolate Rain,” a song with racially-tinged lyrics including “the bell curve blames the DNA” and “flipping cars in
“YouTube’s provided me with a place to experiment, showcase my creativity and share my identity,” said Tay Zonday, whose online fame landed him a performance on a late-night
The award for Best Comedy Video went to “THE MYSTERIOUS TICKING NOISE” in which puppets based on HARRY POTTER BOOK Characters dance and sing merrily before being blown up with a bomb by a gleeful Lord Voldemort.
A video of a baby prone to tumbling over in hysterics was voted most comic, and the creativity crown went to Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, who used people to reenact the videogame Tetris.
The stop-motion Video clip was created at the “Les Urbaines” festival in
Top honours for instructional video went to a
The winner in an Eyewitness category is “
YouTube’s top-voted Videos of 2007 and the finalists in each category can be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07winners.
THE MYSTERIOUS TICKING NOISE is the Best Comedy Video in YouTube Based on Harry Potter Characters
Puppets, racism & safari videos top best list
“In 2007, the YouTube community showed the world that there’s something for everyone on the site,” said YouTube manager of community Mia Quagliarello.
“This year’s YouTube Video Award winners not only include entertainers, they include those who served as a mouthpiece for everyday people, those who inspired and those who informed.”
Awards were given in a dozen categories, ranging from music, sports and comedy to instructional, political, and “adorable.”
US graduate student Tay Zonday won in the music category for “Chocolate Rain,” a song with racially-tinged lyrics including “the bell curve blames the DNA” and “flipping cars in
“YouTube’s provided me with a place to experiment, showcase my creativity and share my identity,” said Tay Zonday, whose online fame landed him a performance on a late-night
The award for Best Comedy Video went to “THE MYSTERIOUS TICKING NOISE” in which puppets based on HARRY POTTER BOOK Characters dance and sing merrily before being blown up with a bomb by a gleeful Lord Voldemort.
A video of a baby prone to tumbling over in hysterics was voted most comic, and the creativity crown went to Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, who used people to reenact the videogame Tetris.
The stop-motion Video clip was created at the “Les Urbaines” festival in
Top honours for instructional video went to a
The winner in an Eyewitness category is “
YouTube’s top-voted Videos of 2007 and the finalists in each category can be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07winners.
JK Rowling writes new book of fairy tales from Harry Potter universe
JK Rowling writes new book of fairy tales from Harry Potter universe
It is a bibliophile's dream and ultimate literary prize - a brand new JK Rowling book, handwritten and hand-illustrated by the author herself, lavishly bound and issued in an edition of just seven personalised copies.
In an extraordinary private publishing venture, the author of the record-breaking Harry Potter books has announced that she is to produce only seven copies of her next 160-page book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a Harry Potter spin-off of five short fairy tales.
Rowling has decided to give six copies, each the size of a paperback, as gifts to friends who helped or supported her through the 17 years that it took her to complete the Harry Potter marathon.
She will sell the seventh at Sotheby's on December 13 to raise money for The Children's Voice, a charity that she co-founded two years ago with Baroness Nicholson, the Tory MEP, to campaign for the rights of European children, particularly in Eastern Europe where more than one million young people are trapped in institutions in grim conditions.
Each copy, written on hand-made Italian paper, is bound in leather and decorated with hand-chased silver symbols such as a heart, a skull and a tree stump. Each copy will also be adorned with different semi-precious stones.
Sotheby's has put a pre-sale estimate of £30,000-£50,000 on the charity copy, which will be decorated with moonstones, but Philip Errington of the auctioneers' books department, admitted that this was "cautious".
Observers predicted that the copy might easily fetch 10 times the estimate. Amy Maclaren, a spokeswoman for the author, declined to comment on whether Rowling's husband, children, agent, publisher or editor were among the friends who would receive copies.
But she added: "At least two of the six don't actually know yet."
Private publishing is not unusual - the 19th century artist and campaigner William Morris published many of his books in tiny editions through his own printing press and the first edition of T E Lawrence's classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom comprised just eight copies.
But Mr Errington called Rowling's new venture "unique" because each copy was hand produced. The Tales Of Beedle The Bard played a central role in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in Rowling's bestselling series.
As the last book reached its climax, Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, bequeathed a volume containing five wizard fairytales to Harry's friend Hermione Granger. It helped provide clues to help Harry defeat his great enemy, Lord Voldemort.
One of the fairytales, The Tale Of The Three Brothers, is recounted in Deathly Hallows. It is retold in Rowling's new book and she has added the four unknown stories, The Fountain Of Fair Fortune, The Warlock's Hairy Heart, The Wizard And The Hopping Pot, and Babbitty Rabbitty And Her Cackling Stump.
Each is around 1,000 words long and the complete book contains around a dozen illustrations. Rowling, who says that she has no intention of publishing the book more widely, said: "The Tales Of Beedle The Bard is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years."
Examples of Rowling's artwork are rare. Mr Errington said: "When you hear that an author is going to illustrate their own book you sometimes have a few concerns. But I think that Jo is a very assured artist."
A dedication in the copy to be sold reads: "Six of these books have been given to those most closely connected to the Harry Potter books during the last 17 years.
"This seventh copy will be auctioned; the proceeds to help institutionalised children who are in desperate need of a voice. So to whoever now owns this book, thank you - and fair fortune be yours!"
Rowling told the BBC: "It's a huge silent scandal how many children within Europe are institutionalised.
"A child with mental health issues was being taken from their family or given by their family to an institution and then placed in a cage and I really would like to do whatever I can to change it."
She said writing something other than Potter had been "like coming up from a deep dive" and disclosed that she has a "half-finished book for children" that is likely to be her next published book.
Battle between JK Rowling and the 50 year old compiler of a Harry Potter Lexicon
The ongoing court battle between JK Rowling and Steven Vander Ark - the 50-year-old compiler of a Harry Potter Lexicon - has created a good deal of heat and not much light.
It isn't in the least relevant that JK Rowling is already rich, or that the judge thinks that Harry Potter is "gibberish" (it is gibberish, of course, and all the better for it), or that Warner Brothers is a big media company, or that the peculiarly named Mr Vander Ark is a grown man and surely ought to have something better to do with his time, or that an Oxford scholar thinks his work is sloppy.
This court case is interesting, and potentially pretty important, because it zeroes in on a significant area of principle. And although Rowling sees herself as the victim of "wholesale theft", there are in fact a number of quite legitimate ways a writer can profit from the work of others.
In the first place, there is parody. My colleague Toby Clements wrote a successful comic novel called The Asti Spumante Code. It was - especially in contrast with its near-namesake - extremely amusing and well-written; but it would undoubtedly not have been published, still less sold enough copies to imperil his friendship with the Inland Revenue, had it not been for the success of The Da Vinci Code.
Then there are unauthorised biographies. It may be annoying to Amy Winehouse that rock hacks she has never met are entitled to rush out cuttings jobs on her life and turn a buck on the back of her talent. But it is hard to see a way in which it would be either possible or desirable to suppress them by law.
Something similar applies to photographs. Few people admit to liking what paparazzi do - except, of course, when consuming their material at the news-stand. But would we be in a better situation if celebrities were able to assert absolute rights over their own likenesses?
There's a line, and it isn't a simple one. If I happen to be passing The Ritz with my box brownie when George Clooney stumbles out carrying a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, its snout smeared with scarlet lipstick and a drugged look in its eyes, I am entitled to take a photo and sell it to a newspaper. I might run into legal difficulties, on the other hand, if I tried to use the image in an advertising campaign for lipstick. That line seems to me to be in approximately the right place.
The category into which the row over the Harry Potter Lexicon falls is a special one, but it has huge implications. What its author is doing - in compiling a reference guide to someone else's original work - is, whatever its motive or quality, more or less identical in kind to what literary academics do for a living.
At one end of the scale you have The Pound Era or Mimesis; at the other, the York Notes. And these books don't just cover olden-day works. My old teacher, John Fuller, was able to publish a hugely helpful guide to the works of WH Auden, for instance, despite the fact that his work remains in copyright.
Some of these sorts of books are presented essayistically; others more or less lexically or encyclopedically. An invaluable tool for scholars is the concordance, something that, before computers, was a colossal and astonishingly boring labour to compile. Essentially, it lists all the words in a writer's work in alphabetical order, and tells you where each one can be found in the original text.
JK Rowling complains that Mr Vander Ark has "plundered" her prose and reproduced it in an A-Z format. That is - at the extreme end of it - precisely what a concordance does. I have sympathy with Rowling's hurt feelings - in particular because she has announced plans to produce her own encyclopedia, and I can understand that Warner Brothers is keen to put down a legal marker of some sort.
But this would put down a legal marker of the wrong sort. It should remain clearly legitimate for people to publish, and profit from, scholarly work on any author in or out of copyright. Rowling herself has in the past shown great good sense and generosity with her copyright. She gives her blessing to the huge number of fans who write their own Potter stories online for fun, for instance, and has let several for-profit parodies pass unmenaced.
This seems to me an instance where - if Mr Vander Ark is determined not to back down as a courtesy to the woman whose work he professes to admire - she were best to grit her teeth and bear it. "Are we the owners of our own work?" she asks. Once that work has travelled out into the world, I'm afraid the true answer is: not entirely.
It isn't in the least relevant that JK Rowling is already rich, or that the judge thinks that Harry Potter is "gibberish" (it is gibberish, of course, and all the better for it), or that Warner Brothers is a big media company, or that the peculiarly named Mr Vander Ark is a grown man and surely ought to have something better to do with his time, or that an Oxford scholar thinks his work is sloppy.
This court case is interesting, and potentially pretty important, because it zeroes in on a significant area of principle. And although Rowling sees herself as the victim of "wholesale theft", there are in fact a number of quite legitimate ways a writer can profit from the work of others.
In the first place, there is parody. My colleague Toby Clements wrote a successful comic novel called The Asti Spumante Code. It was - especially in contrast with its near-namesake - extremely amusing and well-written; but it would undoubtedly not have been published, still less sold enough copies to imperil his friendship with the Inland Revenue, had it not been for the success of The Da Vinci Code.
Then there are unauthorised biographies. It may be annoying to Amy Winehouse that rock hacks she has never met are entitled to rush out cuttings jobs on her life and turn a buck on the back of her talent. But it is hard to see a way in which it would be either possible or desirable to suppress them by law.
Something similar applies to photographs. Few people admit to liking what paparazzi do - except, of course, when consuming their material at the news-stand. But would we be in a better situation if celebrities were able to assert absolute rights over their own likenesses?
There's a line, and it isn't a simple one. If I happen to be passing The Ritz with my box brownie when George Clooney stumbles out carrying a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, its snout smeared with scarlet lipstick and a drugged look in its eyes, I am entitled to take a photo and sell it to a newspaper. I might run into legal difficulties, on the other hand, if I tried to use the image in an advertising campaign for lipstick. That line seems to me to be in approximately the right place.
The category into which the row over the Harry Potter Lexicon falls is a special one, but it has huge implications. What its author is doing - in compiling a reference guide to someone else's original work - is, whatever its motive or quality, more or less identical in kind to what literary academics do for a living.
At one end of the scale you have The Pound Era or Mimesis; at the other, the York Notes. And these books don't just cover olden-day works. My old teacher, John Fuller, was able to publish a hugely helpful guide to the works of WH Auden, for instance, despite the fact that his work remains in copyright.
Some of these sorts of books are presented essayistically; others more or less lexically or encyclopedically. An invaluable tool for scholars is the concordance, something that, before computers, was a colossal and astonishingly boring labour to compile. Essentially, it lists all the words in a writer's work in alphabetical order, and tells you where each one can be found in the original text.
JK Rowling complains that Mr Vander Ark has "plundered" her prose and reproduced it in an A-Z format. That is - at the extreme end of it - precisely what a concordance does. I have sympathy with Rowling's hurt feelings - in particular because she has announced plans to produce her own encyclopedia, and I can understand that Warner Brothers is keen to put down a legal marker of some sort.
But this would put down a legal marker of the wrong sort. It should remain clearly legitimate for people to publish, and profit from, scholarly work on any author in or out of copyright. Rowling herself has in the past shown great good sense and generosity with her copyright. She gives her blessing to the huge number of fans who write their own Potter stories online for fun, for instance, and has let several for-profit parodies pass unmenaced.
This seems to me an instance where - if Mr Vander Ark is determined not to back down as a courtesy to the woman whose work he professes to admire - she were best to grit her teeth and bear it. "Are we the owners of our own work?" she asks. Once that work has travelled out into the world, I'm afraid the true answer is: not entirely.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
#891 Joanne (JK) Rowling
Age: 41
Fortune: self made
Source: Harry Potter
Net Worth: $1.0 billion
Country Of Citizenship: United Kingdom
Residence: Edinburgh , Scotland, Europe & Russia
Industry: Media/Entertainment
Marital Status: married, 3 children
Education: University of Exeter, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Once a single mother living on welfare in a coldwater flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling is now the only billionaire author on our list. The novelist has announced that the 7th (and last) installment of the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be published July 21. Worldwide sales of the Potter books have topped 325 million copies. The film seriesfrom which Rowling enjoys a cut of royalties and merchandisin has already grossed $3.5 billion, and there's no doubt three more movies to come.
http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/rumours.cfm
Fortune: self made
Source: Harry Potter
Net Worth: $1.0 billion
Country Of Citizenship: United Kingdom
Residence: Edinburgh , Scotland, Europe & Russia
Industry: Media/Entertainment
Marital Status: married, 3 children
Education: University of Exeter, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Once a single mother living on welfare in a coldwater flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling is now the only billionaire author on our list. The novelist has announced that the 7th (and last) installment of the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be published July 21. Worldwide sales of the Potter books have topped 325 million copies. The film seriesfrom which Rowling enjoys a cut of royalties and merchandisin has already grossed $3.5 billion, and there's no doubt three more movies to come.
http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/rumours.cfm
USA Today Names "Deathly Hallows" Top Book of 2007
USA Today Names "Deathly Hallows" Top Book of 2007
There is a new set of stories online from USA Today regarding the spectacular sales of the final book in author J. K. Rowling’s series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” and of the impact this, and other books, had on the publishing industry this past year. In a series of reports, the magazine notes the smashing of “records with its 12-million-copy first printing” and the staggering “8.3 million [copies] sold in its first 24 hours” when the novel finally hit bookshelves on July 21, 2007. In the first article, USA Today names the Harry Potter novels, along with the sudden increase in popularity of paperback editions of books, the biggest trends of 2007.
“Deathly Hallows” also received the top honor when the online edition of the paper released their list of Top 100 books for 2007, naming the seventh installment of the series number one. Interestingly enough, the previous six Harry Potter novels, each of them having been in print for many years, were also ranked among 2007’s top books. The sixth novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” came in at number 11 on the list while the remaining books of the series ranked as follows:
# 33. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
# 36. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
# 70. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
# 88. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
# 96. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Finally, the paper takes a look back at the number one books for each week of 2007, attempting to decipher the reading habits and influences which made that particular book tops during a specific time. Noting that no another book came close to the sales of “Deathly Hallows” in 2007, the report says this of the novel’s place at number one:
The weekend of July 21 marked the end of an era. That’s when the seventh and final Harry Potter book went on sale, pulling the other six books in the series high onto the list. Even the Harry Potter Schoolbooks (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch Through the Ages”) made an appearance on the Top 150 list. Rowling is such a giant force that Potter books accounted for 8% of all sales tracked on the list in 2007. She is the year’s top-selling author, selling nearly three times as many books as No. 2 author James Patterson. Deathly Hallows is the No.1 book of 2007, selling nearly three times as many copies as its nearest competitor, No. 2 The Secret.
There is a new set of stories online from USA Today regarding the spectacular sales of the final book in author J. K. Rowling’s series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” and of the impact this, and other books, had on the publishing industry this past year. In a series of reports, the magazine notes the smashing of “records with its 12-million-copy first printing” and the staggering “8.3 million [copies] sold in its first 24 hours” when the novel finally hit bookshelves on July 21, 2007. In the first article, USA Today names the Harry Potter novels, along with the sudden increase in popularity of paperback editions of books, the biggest trends of 2007.
“Deathly Hallows” also received the top honor when the online edition of the paper released their list of Top 100 books for 2007, naming the seventh installment of the series number one. Interestingly enough, the previous six Harry Potter novels, each of them having been in print for many years, were also ranked among 2007’s top books. The sixth novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” came in at number 11 on the list while the remaining books of the series ranked as follows:
# 33. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
# 36. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
# 70. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
# 88. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
# 96. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Finally, the paper takes a look back at the number one books for each week of 2007, attempting to decipher the reading habits and influences which made that particular book tops during a specific time. Noting that no another book came close to the sales of “Deathly Hallows” in 2007, the report says this of the novel’s place at number one:
The weekend of July 21 marked the end of an era. That’s when the seventh and final Harry Potter book went on sale, pulling the other six books in the series high onto the list. Even the Harry Potter Schoolbooks (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch Through the Ages”) made an appearance on the Top 150 list. Rowling is such a giant force that Potter books accounted for 8% of all sales tracked on the list in 2007. She is the year’s top-selling author, selling nearly three times as many books as No. 2 author James Patterson. Deathly Hallows is the No.1 book of 2007, selling nearly three times as many copies as its nearest competitor, No. 2 The Secret.
J.K. Rowling Updates Site, Says Not on Facebook, MySpace
J.K. Rowling Updates Site, Says Not on Facebook, MySpace
Our favorite author has updated her website this morning, with a new entry in the Rumors category, dispelling any notion that she has a MySpace, Bebo, Facebook page or takes part in any of the popular social networking sites. Jo writes:
No, sorry, not even one of them, though they do seem to lead very exciting lives, these fake J K Rowlings. I like to imagine them partying with all my imaginary friends (‘a close friend confided…’) in some bright and shiny alternative universe. But meanwhile, on planet earth, the dull human J K Rowling hasn’t got, and has never had, a profile on MySpace, Bebo or any similar site.
Our favorite author has updated her website this morning, with a new entry in the Rumors category, dispelling any notion that she has a MySpace, Bebo, Facebook page or takes part in any of the popular social networking sites. Jo writes:
No, sorry, not even one of them, though they do seem to lead very exciting lives, these fake J K Rowlings. I like to imagine them partying with all my imaginary friends (‘a close friend confided…’) in some bright and shiny alternative universe. But meanwhile, on planet earth, the dull human J K Rowling hasn’t got, and has never had, a profile on MySpace, Bebo or any similar site.
J. K. Rowling Included on 2008 Forbes Billionaire List
J. K. Rowling Included on 2008 Forbes Billionaire List
Forbes Magazine has released their annual list of the world’s billionaires and, once again, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has been included as part of their 2008 ranking. Named among the Celebrity Billionaires, Ms. Rowling is the only author on their list. Forbes notes the following:
Once a single mother living on welfare in a cold-water flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling is now the only billionaire author on our list. The seventh and last installment of her wildly successful Harry Potter series was released last July to throngs of rabid fans who made it the fastest-selling book of all time. More than 11 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours. Feeding the Potter hype machine: The film version of the fifth book came out the same month.
Readers will remember J. K. Rowling made the 2007 Forbes list as well.
Forbes Magazine has released their annual list of the world’s billionaires and, once again, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has been included as part of their 2008 ranking. Named among the Celebrity Billionaires, Ms. Rowling is the only author on their list. Forbes notes the following:
Once a single mother living on welfare in a cold-water flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, Rowling is now the only billionaire author on our list. The seventh and last installment of her wildly successful Harry Potter series was released last July to throngs of rabid fans who made it the fastest-selling book of all time. More than 11 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours. Feeding the Potter hype machine: The film version of the fifth book came out the same month.
Readers will remember J. K. Rowling made the 2007 Forbes list as well.
JK Rowling Nominated for Children's Choice Book Award
JK Rowling Nominated for Children's Choice Book Award
Author J.K. Rowling has been nominated for an award given by the Children’s Book Council. The School Library Journal reports that Jo is nominated for her book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as a “2007 Author of the Year” along with Anthony Horowitz (Snakehead), Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse), Jeff Kinney (Diary of Wimpy Kid), and Erin Hunter (Warriors, Powers of Three: The Sight). Voting is open to students now until May 4 via this link, with the winners due to be announced at a special Children’s Book Week gala May 13.
Author J.K. Rowling has been nominated for an award given by the Children’s Book Council. The School Library Journal reports that Jo is nominated for her book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as a “2007 Author of the Year” along with Anthony Horowitz (Snakehead), Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse), Jeff Kinney (Diary of Wimpy Kid), and Erin Hunter (Warriors, Powers of Three: The Sight). Voting is open to students now until May 4 via this link, with the winners due to be announced at a special Children’s Book Week gala May 13.
Harry Potter Book Series Wins at Kids' Choice Awards
Harry Potter Book Series Wins at Kids' Choice Awards
Once again, the Harry Potter books are tops, as the book series by J.K. Rowling was named a winner at tonight’s Nick Kids’ Choice Awards.
JK Rowling Honored at British Book Awards
JK Rowling Honored at British Book Awards
Previously we reported Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was to receive a special award at the British Book Awards. That ceremony took place tonight in London, England where Jo was presented with the Outstanding Achievement honor. You can see early photos of Jo at this event, here in our galleries. Bloomberg reports that JKR was given the award by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said “She has joined a distinguished line of British authors whose work has got the whole country reading,’’ Brown said in a presentation speech made available before tonight’s ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Her books “will be read for many years to come by successive generations,’’ he said. He continued noting “She has been incredibly generous with her time and her money supporting some of the U.K.’s most deserving charities, but always in a quiet way,’’ he said in the prepared remarks.”
The Guardian also reports that Jo “said she was thrilled “and quite pleased that I haven’t been pensioned off just yet with a lifetime achievement award”.
Additional photos of JKR at the British Book awards can be viewed here via Getty, Rex and WENN. In addition, you may read the entire list of winners from the British Book awards via this link. Thanks Stephanie.
Previously we reported Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was to receive a special award at the British Book Awards. That ceremony took place tonight in London, England where Jo was presented with the Outstanding Achievement honor. You can see early photos of Jo at this event, here in our galleries. Bloomberg reports that JKR was given the award by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said “She has joined a distinguished line of British authors whose work has got the whole country reading,’’ Brown said in a presentation speech made available before tonight’s ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Her books “will be read for many years to come by successive generations,’’ he said. He continued noting “She has been incredibly generous with her time and her money supporting some of the U.K.’s most deserving charities, but always in a quiet way,’’ he said in the prepared remarks.”
The Guardian also reports that Jo “said she was thrilled “and quite pleased that I haven’t been pensioned off just yet with a lifetime achievement award”.
Additional photos of JKR at the British Book awards can be viewed here via Getty, Rex and WENN. In addition, you may read the entire list of winners from the British Book awards via this link. Thanks Stephanie.
Extract of Deathly Hallows, New Illustrations in Book for Prince Charles
Confirmed: Extract of Deathly Hallows, New Illustrations in Book for Prince Charles
Earlier we told you that author J.K. Rowling would contribute to a book to be published in honor of the 60th birthday of Prince Charles. Reps for JKR have now confirmed to TLC that there will indeed be an extract of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contained in this new book, along with two new illustrations of the story from author and artist Quentin Blake. Along with the contribution from Jo, others such as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson are contributing to the birthday book for The Prince of Wales, with new material due from Philip Ardagh and Anthony Horowitz. In addition to the new illustrations from Quentin Blake, other artists contributing are Axel Scheffler, Posy Simmonds and Emily Gravett . The Birthday Book will be published on November 6, with all proceeds to benefit The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, a charity which”provides schoolchildren with opportunities to visit theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries.”
Earlier we told you that author J.K. Rowling would contribute to a book to be published in honor of the 60th birthday of Prince Charles. Reps for JKR have now confirmed to TLC that there will indeed be an extract of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contained in this new book, along with two new illustrations of the story from author and artist Quentin Blake. Along with the contribution from Jo, others such as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson are contributing to the birthday book for The Prince of Wales, with new material due from Philip Ardagh and Anthony Horowitz. In addition to the new illustrations from Quentin Blake, other artists contributing are Axel Scheffler, Posy Simmonds and Emily Gravett . The Birthday Book will be published on November 6, with all proceeds to benefit The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, a charity which”provides schoolchildren with opportunities to visit theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries.”
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