J.K. Rowling.

There is a lot to unpack when looking into the life of J.K. Rowling. For starters, we must address her pen names and the reasoning behind them. Many people often wonder where the name J.K. came from. Well, Joanne’s pen name, J.K., stands for Joanne and Kathleen. Kathleen is Rowling’s grandmother and she wanted to incorporate her grandmother’s name since she lacks a middle name of her own (“J.K. Rowling”). However, this change was not something that she desired, it was actually suggested by her publishers. Joanne was outed for being a woman by the publishers of Harry Potter. The publishers wanted her novel to appeal to all genders; therefore, they did not want to label her as a woman off the bat, that is why they had chosen her initials without giving her much of a choice (Elizabeth). Rowling also went by another pen name, Robert Galbraith, which is used for her fictional stories revolving around crime. She used this pseudonym “which was originally intended to distinguish her adult-oriented fare from the Harry Potter series. Although Rowling did not originally disclose that she was the woman behind the nom de plume, a computer program reportedly unmasked the author’s true identity” (Lang). This pen name actually caused quite the controversy when looked further into since it is linked back to an anti-LGBTQ+ gay conversion therapist; however, Rowling has denied any affiliation with said conversion therapist. She stated that the name that she had chosen simply was in admiration for one of her childhood heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, and combined it for a name that she created in her childhood, Ella Galbraith (Nolan).