Autor: Tradutores

Tão feliz quanto Harry no Cafe Society

Tradução: Kaede Shirakawa
Revisão: {patylda}

Carabine, Michelle. “As Happy as Harry in the Cafe Society,” Evening News (Edinburgh), December 7, 1999

HARRY POTTER creator JK Rowling today said she still loved to write in Edinburgh’s cafes despite her meteoric rise to fame.

Rowling penned much of her early Harry Potter work at Nicolson’s in the Capital’s Nicolson Street with daughter Jessica beside her in a pram.

The 34-year-old has complained in the past about the image of the single mum scribbling away in a cafe to keep away from her damp flat.

But in an interview, Rowling said that she still found her muse in Edinburgh ‘s cafes.

Asked about the future, the author said: “I want to finish the books and make them as good as I can. I am still living in Edinburgh because I love it and my daughter is very happy there.

“It also has good writing cafes, and I have now learned not to publicise where I am writing because of all the interest it creates.

I was a bit slow on the uptake with that one.”

Rowling has just started reading her books to Jessica. “I started reading them to her a few months ago and she really loves them. She is currently asking for her bedroom to be decorated like Hogwarts, but I’m going to give her a few weeks to really make up her mind on that one.”

Jessica, now six, attends her local primary school – and to her friends, Rowling is just another mum.

The best-selling author explained: “It was older children at her school who were a bit fazed when I walked into the playground – because they were reading the book in their class.”

Since 1997, JK Rowling’s books about Harry Potter, the trainee wizard, have sold more than 30 million copies, been translated into 28 languages, and earned GBP 14.5 million.

But the 34-year-old still seems to be in awe of her fame.

“It has so over-shot my wildest expectations that sometimes it is a little bit scary,” she admitted.

“I certainly never expected the interest to be focused on me and that has not been a very comfortable experience.

“The summit of my ambition was handing my credit card to someone one day and them saying: ‘Oh my God, you wrote my favourite book’.”

Neither is she tempted to flog the Harry Potter phenomenon to death, still insisting that the number of books in the series is to be limited to the magically significant number seven.

“The only thing that I may do is a guide to the wider wizarding world and all the minor characters because I have all their histories.”

Rowling has developed a close relationship with the fictitious Harry Potter, referring to prizes awarded for the books as things “we” have won.

By the time she completes her seventh book, she will have been writing about the trainee wizard’s adventures for 13 years.

So what will life without Harry be like?

“It will be like someone died,” she confessed. “There are things about the Harry phenomenon that I won’t miss much but Harry himself and the writing . . . it is going to be like someone died.”

But Rowling’s writing career won’t die with Harry. She said: “I get other ideas but I just scribble them down and shove them in the filing cabinet – Harry is a time-consuming project.”

But when she has more time, she plans to develop these ideas, some of which are for children’s books and others for adults.

In the meantime, Warner Bros has bought the rights to make a Harry Potter film and Rowling has already had a lot of input.

“Warner Bros have been amazing at letting me have my say and honestly I think I have had an unusual amount of input. I know my ideas are being listened to.”

Copyright 1999 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.

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Joanne Kathleen Rowling, criadora de Harry Potter

Tradução: Milla Parkinson
Revisão: {patylda}

Davies, Frank. “Joanne Kathleen Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter,” Sunday Gazette-Mail (Charleston, SC), 14 November 1999

WASHINGTON – Joanne Kathleen Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter publishing phenomenon, gets a world-weary look when she hears the same questions: What’s your secret? Where do you get your inspiration?

“If I knew where it came from, I’d go live there,” she quipped during a recent appearance at the National Press Club. “Most of the ideas just come, though some I have to really work at.”

And what about her amazing following? Her first three books about young Harry and his phantasmagorical adventures at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry top the best-seller charts, with U.S. sales exceeding 7 million books. But unlike “Star Wars,” “Tarzan” or “Pokemon,” this is not the result of a global marketing machine.

This is the work of a diminutive English writer, 34, who was unemployed a few years ago and sat hunched over a table in an Edinburgh coffee shop inventing Harry and his friends. She confided only in her sister. She was turned down by several publishers.

Bloomsbury took a chance, but made the author’s name J.K. Rowling because of concerns that boys wouldn’t read the book if they knew it was written by a woman.

“Why so popular? I’ve been asked that times without number,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t want to analyze it. I don’t have a magic insight. And I don’t write with an imaginary focus group in mind.”

In a scene befitting a rock star or sports hero, Rowling was besieged by young fans at the Press Club, part of a two-week U.S. tour. She signed more than 400 books, and displayed an impish humor and no-nonsense style in answering questions from children and their parents:

– Advising would-be writers: “Read as much as you can. Realize that a lot of what you will write is rubbish. Persevere.”

– Advising parents of young writers: “Don’t tell them what they write is not realistic.”

– On the Harry Potter series: “I will write seven books. When I’m done I expect a real sense of bereavement. That will be 13 years of work.”

– On Harry’s fate: “I know what will happen to Harry in book seven, but I’m not going to tell you – he’s got quite a full agenda coming up, poor boy.”

– How she came up with the idea for “quidditch,” the airborne sport played on broomsticks that has a central role in the series: “Every secret society needs a sport, so I came up with this dangerous game. Like cricket, quidditch could go on for years and years, until the golden snitch is caught.”

– On whether Harry and his friend Hermione will have a date when they get older: “No, but I won’t answer for anyone else – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

Harry Potter fever may continue to grow. The fourth book will be out next year. The movie version of the first, “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” is due out from Warner Bros. in 2001.

A few critics have complained of sorcery and violence, but Rowling says she writes “moral books” with Harry, Ron and Hermione as “innately good people.”

Besides, she noted, “If you were to ban all books with witchcraft and the supernatural, you would throw out three-quarters of children’s literature.”

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Autora de Harry Potter é simplesmente uma criança de coração

Tradução: Frede_Potter
Revisão: Adriana Snape

Gilson, Nancy. “‘Harry Potter’ Author is Just a Kid at Heart,” The Columbus Dispatch, November 3, 1999

Joanne Kathleen Rowling, better known as J.K. Rowling and the author of the Harry Potter series of fantasy books, believes that she’s successful as a writer for children largely because she remembers what it’s like to be a kid.

“I just wrote what I thought I would have liked to read when I was a kid,” Rowling said recently during an interview in Chicago.

“I’m not a kid now (she’s 34), but I sure remember what it was like.”

So what was the author of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone like when she was 11 years old?

“I was a lot like Hermione,” said Rowling (whose name rhymes with bowling.)

“But I wasn’t that clever. I didn’t love school . . . I was terrible at sports. I broke my arm when I was 12 playing netball. That’s like basketball only it’s more boring.”

Rowling said she knew from the time she was 6 years old that she wanted to be a writer.

“I kept a journal in fits and starts,” she said. “This is rather morbid, but I always thought that I might get hit by a bus and die and someone would find my journal and there’d be all these nasty things about people in there, so I would stop writing in my journals because I didn’t want that to happen. Then I’d start again.”

Rowling was born near Bristol, England. Her father was a manager at an automobile plant and her mother was a technician in a laboratory. Unlike Harry, Rowling did not attend a British boarding school, but a public school.

Her parents wanted her to become a translator or perhaps an interpreter at the United Nations, so Rowling studied French in college. But she really wanted to be a writer.

Much of her interest in writing came about because she dearly loved to read. Some of her favorite books as a child included those by Judy Blume, Louisa May Alcott and C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia series. She also likes the writing of Roald Dahl, especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which she considers “his masterpiece.”

“And I suppose the one book that very much influenced Harry Potter was Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge . . . I liked all the food descriptions and I try to put lots of descriptions about meals into all the Harry books.”

Rowling has a daughter, Jesse, who is 6. Jesse has begged to hear the Harry Potter books so Rowling has started to read them to her.

The family has two pets. “One is a vicious rabbit named Jemimah. Jesse named him. And the other is a male guinea pig whose name is Jasmine.”

While Rowling was on tour in the United States, appearing at book stores and meeting children, she carried with her the manuscript for the fourth Harry Potter book.

“Not that I’m planning on getting very much done,” she said, “but I don’t like to be away from him.”

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