JK Rowling reveals she’s written novel on her party dress

● Book that may never be published is hanging up in author’s wardrobe

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has revealed she has written a novel that may never be published – and it is hanging in her wardrobe scrawled across a party dress.

The writer has said she penned the secret text on the outfit she wore for her 50th birthday party.

She told US news channel CNN: “The theme of my 50th birthday, which I held at Hallowe’en, even though that’s not really my birthday, was ‘come as your own private nightmare’.

“And I went as a lost manuscript. And I wrote over a dress most of that book.

“So that book, I don’t know whether it will ever be published, but it’s actually hanging in a wardrobe currently.”

Rowling, who adopted the initials JK for her first name Joanne and her grandmother’s name Kathleen, said she was initially encouraged to take on the pen name to disguise her gender.

She said: “My publisher, who published Harry Potter, they said to me, ‘we think this is a book that will appeal to boys and girls’.

And I said, ‘oh, great’. And they said, ‘so could we use

0 Rowling wrote on the dress she wore for her 50th birthday your initials?’ Because, basically they were trying to disguise my gender.

“And obviously, that lasted about three seconds, because – which is wonderful, I’m certainly not complaining, but the book won an award and I got a big advance from America and I got a lot of publicity. So I was outed as a woman.”

Speaking about her chil- dren’s charity Lumos, Rowling said she was spurred into action after seeing a news report about one child in the Czech Republic who was kept in a caged-in cot and said it tapped into her fear of being trapped in spaces and powerlessness.