Author of the week: J.K. Rowling

last updated 8 January 2015

Harry Potter fans everywhere rejoiced last week when J.K. Rowling told Oprah Winfrey that she's open to writing more books about the boy wizard, said Andrew Stern in Reuters.com. "I'm not saying I won't," the rarely interviewed author said during a conversation with Winfrey that was broadcast Oct. 1. "I love writing them." Indeed, Rowling said that when she wrote what she thought would be the final pages of the series, she wept uncontrollably. "I cried like I haven't cried since my mother died," she said. "Although I knew it was coming—[just as] we all know the people we love are mortal, we know it's going to end—you can't prepare yourself for it."

Longtime Rowling watchers were intrigued to see the author open up about her "mum," said Rachel Quigley in the London Daily Mail. She said she deeply regrets that she never shared Harry and his story with her mother, who died of multiple sclerosis months after Rowling started writing the first book. "I would have told her about it," Rowling said. "I know she would have really liked it." The years after her mother's death were the worst in the author's life, as she struggled with depression and strived to find a publisher. Rowling's extended grieving over her mother may explain why the series, intended primarily for young readers, features such an unusually frank treatment of death. "Her death is on virtually every other page of the Harry Potter books," Rowling said. "The books are what they are because she died."