As reported, JK Rowling was interviewed by Jennifer Byrne of Australia's ABC1 network, where they discussed some of the dramatic themes and notable characters from The Casual Vacancy, and where the author admitted she would not write another book from Harry Potter's perspective, but perhaps someone else's. That special, called "Life After Harry Potter," can be seen, thanks to Ravin's tip, below.





Rowling also conducted radio interviews with BBC Radio 4 and NPR, discussing the release of The Casual Vacancy, and reading numerous excerpts from the comic tragedy.

The Harry Potter author did tease, during the BBC interview, that although she has completed Harry's story, she has considered writing stories on other characters from the Wizarding World, though wouldn't mention who. These three are the final in the exclusive set of print and broadcast interviews with JK Rowling.

BBC Radio 4: Do you ever feel Harry, Ron and Hermione tugging at your sleeve?
J.K. Rowling: No, not those particular characters because I feel I finished their story. The world of witches and wizards does sometimes tug at me a little bit. Not to do anything specific, but because I lived there so long – it was seventeen years. I have no plans to write anything else. But I’ve always said never say never, purely because I liked it and I might want to do it again. But Harry’s story, I’m as sure as you can be, is done.

BBC: You said you were writing two books at the time you were writing The Casual Vacancy
J.K. Rowling: More, actually. There were two books for children that are pretty well developed, and I think I will publish at some point. I like both of those. I’m pretty sure I know what the next one for adults will be, which I have started but is not very well advanced.

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NPR interview: "I think that I've had a very strange life," Rowling adds. She came from a well-educated, lower-middle-class background, she says, but as many biographies have noted, she ended up on welfare after her first marriage broke down. Pressed to describe what "middle class" means in the British class system, Rowling laughs. "I'm really not qualified to do it ... I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer. Social mobility is one of the great issues of the day here, as I'm sure it is in America."

Rowling says she hasn't met with class prejudice since her success. But, she adds, "I would say that I have many times met with the assumption that my attitudes have changed much more than they have towards people who are still in the kind of situation I once was." She recalls an encounter with a man who described his neighborhood as free of "riff-raff." "His assumption was that I would be glad to have kept out of my area the kind of person that I used to be, because I think, you know, not that long ago he would have considered me riff-raff, too."

Rowling's experience with poverty — and with teaching — informed her portrait of the deprived and disruptive Krystal. "When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance," she says. "This automatic denial, this wish not to take responsibility for anything, this fear that if fault is found, they will be condemned and ruthlessly punished ... I saw that a lot when I was teaching. And yet it does absolutely, it can and does often go hand in hand with a very routinely cavalier ... relationship with the truth, and with what you and I would consider very basic morals."

But when characters like Krystal and her mother feel powerless or unjustly accused, their anger can be intense. "One of the great problems for me is that the poor ... are so often discussed just as this large, shapeless mass. You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience," she says. "You become part of a problem. You're someone who stands in a line to get money; it's not where you want to be, and you become very voiceless."

Rowling adds that her 19-year-old daughter has read Vacancy. "She had a curious reaction, actually. ... She said, 'It's made me realize how much I don't know.' .... She wasn't old enough when we left a life of real poverty to remember some of what I can remember, and I suppose this book brought it home to her, what kind of existence we could have had."

Order J.K. Rowling's 512-page book The Casual Vacancy now, via:

Amazon.com - The Casual Vacancy Hardcover | The Casual Vacancy Kindle
Amazon.co.uk - The Casual Vacancy Hardcover | The Casual Vacancy Kindle
Amazon Canada - The Casual Vacancy Hardcover | The Casual Vacancy Audio CD

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