One question regarding this development: Do you think her wand has a slide-out keyboard, or is it a touch screen? NEW YORK (AP) -- The real J.K. Rowling has come to Twitter. Wanting to counter numerous fake Rowlings on Twitter,...
LONDON (AP) -- The publisher of the wildly popular and very profitable "Harry Potter" books says it intends to fight a lawsuit alleging that author J.K. Rowling stole the idea for the series about the boy wizard. Bloomsbury Publishing...
My dear friend Peter Sagal* has a good discussion going on his blog about what qualities constitute the perfect novel. He's not asking about best novels -- but rather books that are marvels of structure and technique that you find...
Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries plans a rare book auction that will include what it calls a "rare true first first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," with a signed card by J. K. Rowling. It can be yours...
Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer have a lot in common: a thing for the semi-dead, rabid fans who would gnaw a limb off (yours or theirs) to get to their latest material, enough cash in the bank to...
Fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series are well aware of the literary reputation of Hogwarts, A History, which is always being quoted by Hermione Granger, aka the cleverest witch of her generation. Many of us, in fact, live in...
Today is Harry Potter's birthday, as well as his creator's. And Harry's fans can rejoice: J.K. Rowling is bringing The Tales of Beedle the Bard to print, with both US and UK editions to be published Dec. 4. The illustrated...
J.K. Rowling is NOT visiting a small town in Louisiana, disappointed Harry Potter fans have learned. When I came across this story, via Shelf Awareness) at first I was outraged that a bookstore in Slidell, La. could fall for someone...
That's probably too long for a marketable book title, even if it were a real Harry Potter book. It is, more or less, the title for one of the keynote addresses given this past weekend at Portus 2008, a conference...
Yeah, it's sexist. But I had several of the women at Portus tell me the same thing. Here's the setup: A single fellow could do far worse than connect with Harry Potter fandom as a way to meet women. Of...
The Portus 2008 conference is a Harry Potter-themed academic/fandom event going on the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas this weekend. Also in the hotel is a conference for Gospel for Asia, a Christian missionary organization that targets, duh, Asia. So...
Part of what makes "fandom" different from regular fans is the level of creativity brought to the enterprise. Here at Portus 2008, the conference going on this weekend in Dallas, many of the proceedings are academic and intellectual. And some...
In response to the talk on Christian themes in Harry Potter, I feel so vindicated that I wrote about this back in 2005 for the Dallas Morning News, just before the sixth book was released and back when people were...
Portus 2008 is an academic/fandom Harry Potter conference that's going on in Dallas. Here's the story I wrote about it a couple of days ago. I'm at one of the presentations, "Christ in the Forest, Aslan and Harry Walk to...
Catherine Belcher is a education professor at Loyola Marymount University who believes that the Potter books can be used in the classroom. She says that the fact that she teaches as a Jesuit school makes it easy to search for...
A bit of overview: Looks like the event will draw the 700 or so predicted. I've just attended a keynote luncheon -- held in a room with no wifi or even cellphone access. Go figure. But that was my first...
This panel is dear to my heart. I wrote a column saying that Rowling's revelation that she thought Dumbledore was gay was information that either should have been in the books -- or she should not have talked about it....
For Harry Potter fans making Portus plans this weekend, here's a look at the highlights for the rest of the weekend: Friday: Lots of talk by Potter academics and experts in the morning and afternoon, lots of food, Portus Podcast...
I noted in the last post how much fun everyone seemed to be having as friends and web colleagues from across the country enjoyed their reunions (www.mugglenet.com staffers from California, Maryland, Georgia and New York were all catching up...
Here at the Portus 2008 conference, I'm in one of those presentations that really puts, as I described it in my advance, pointy-headed academics together with pointy-hatted Harry Potter fans. In this case the presenter is Edmund Kern, associate professor...
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