J. K. Rowling

Seven books about a school year did more for the reading habits of a generation than any publishing initiative before or since. Harry Potter is the best-selling book series in history, and the explanation usually given, that it made children read, undersells the actual achievement, which was structural. Rowling planned a seven-volume arc with a boarding-school calendar as its metronome, so every book had a built-in beginning, middle and end while the larger story kept escalating underneath. By her own long-told account the idea arrived on a train from Manchester to London in 1990.

She has spent the years since trying to be read as something other than the Potter author, with mixed results. The Casual Vacancy is a bleak realist novel about local government in a small English town. The Cormoran Strike crime novels, written as Robert Galbraith and now a long-running series, are the more successful reinvention: conventional detective fiction, patiently plotted, with the pseudonym doing the work of getting them reviewed on their own terms. She has also written screenplays and expanded the wizarding world onto film.

Her awards include a Hugo for Best Novel, a Locus for Best Fantasy Novel and a Bram Stoker for Best Work for Young Readers, which between them describe a writer claimed by three separate genre communities at once. She remains one of the most argued-about figures in publishing.