attention all you muggles out there it's hard to believe but it's been eight
years since the last Harry Potter book well since then JK Rowling has focused
on writing for adults but will she ever write four kids again
Matt sat down with her for an exclusive interview to talk about that and the
charity she's now devoting most of her time to so you've been away from a camera basically for a couple of years
which leads me to believe you have been busy finishing the next installment of
Harry no no I haven't but even as I answer that I know that someone's cutting this on YouTube to make it look
as though I gave you hope so I'm afraid I haven't been writing no Harry Potter well I you know I keep
saying that I feel I wrapped Harry's story up and you got to know when to
stop shaking my kids would beg to differ look I've always I have always said
Never Say Never that will not Never Say Never I've
always said I'm not going to say I definitely won't because because I don't
see why I should say that but I think Harry Potter eight as in what happened
next to Harry Ron Hermione I don't think that's going to happen see now I heard that answer and I thought there's hope
so you're not saying no exactly in all reality JK Rowling most likely has been too busy to write an eighth book for the
Harry Potter series one of the best-selling book series in history
she's focusing her attention and fortune a fortune once estimated to be worth a
billion dollars on helping the eight million children living in orphanages
and institutions around the world through her charity Lumos take me back
to the trigger what caused you to go in this direction the trigger was a single
photograph in a newspaper I came across a photograph of a small boy who appeared
to be caged and he was screaming through what appeared to be wire and the image
was so disturbing I wanted to turn the page in fact I have turned the page and
then I felt very ashamed of myself and I thought no if it's as bad as it looks you have to do something about it
the darkest places if one only remembers to turn on the light Lumos let's remind
people right look so Loomis for those who don't know is a spell I created in
the Harry Potter books it's a light bringing spell was that the mission
statement was that to shed light on very much exactly right so that it's twofold
first of all bring the problem to light we are literally trying to show the
world what these institutions do to children we know that it profoundly
harms emotional physical psychological development so we need to shine a light on the problem but there's also the
image of bringing light in darkness so obviously we are looking to to help
these children and greatly improve their lives and I know one of the goals of
illumise is to educate people dispel some myths and also tell them about some
things that are true for example we hear the term orphanages except this is such
an important point as many of those kids are not orphans eighty percent eighty
percent of the eight million children living in institutions globally have
either a living parent who would like to care for them or immediate family so
let's stop it would like to care at some point exactly felt they ran out of
options they ran out of options so the single largest driver in two
institutions is poverty so if you're literally faced with a situation where
you're being told where you can your child can starve or we'll put it in the
institution and it will be fed what are you going to choose you want your child to live right is the goal dojo to
eliminate all orphanages that's that's the goal absolutely but don't you have
to be careful aren't there some institutions that are providing enormous lee important services for children in
need the evidence is that we can give better care within the family we can
have health visitors and social workers you know community workers and these
buildings themselves can be repurposed to provide the same care but the child
remains with the parent in the family when you deal with information like this
yeah and it weighs on you very heavily I can see it does I don't want to put you
on the couch here I'm not trying to analyze you but is it one of the reasons that when you were finished with Harry
you went to adult books because is it simply too hard the dichotomy of writing
children's Hasse's while you're dealing with these
children's tragedies in parts of the world no it's not
I've never shied away in my writing for children or in my writing for adults
with dealing with the darker side of life I definitely will write for children again because I love writing
for kids so that's that will definitely happen and that will sit comfortably
alongside this work and maybe I'll get to read read that new work to some of these children you know is it fair to
say that you would be as proud if not more proud to have this as a major part
of your legacy as you would no question with what you've done no close children's literature
no question at all I mean it's real living breathing children you know
that's the thing I keep going back to map this is a solvable problem so many
problems in the world it's kind of open-ended we hope will do some good we
hope we'll find the cure we hope we'll find the solution we know what the
solution is here we can make this happen that's not to say it's easy but if the
will is there globally we can change this you just have to love someone with
that much influence and that big a megaphone using it for such good and the
story about her almost turning the page but then saying no how many of us have
had that experience firing by the way she was here in New York for the US
launch of Lumos and that's going to have a lot more of this exclusive inverse
interview on Monday Rowling's going to open up about the Harry Potter character
she recently had a disturbing dream about and the lessons that she has
learned from failure didn't sound like we were getting another book out of it
done well for her fascinating more of that on Monday with Madame