J.K. Rowling to publish new book, on Harvard speech

As may be obvious, J.K. Rowling has ascended to an author status where her every word is suitable for publishing. Now she's about to publish one of her speeches.

Little, Brown announced Tuesday it will publish an illustrated edition of Rowling's 2008 Harvard commencement speech, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination.

The book will be illustrated by Joel Holland and is due out in April 2015.

Sales will benefit Lumos, Rowling's charity for disadvantaged children, and financial aid at Harvard.

Rowling's speech was considered affecting at the time, even given the usual publishing-industry hyperbole about words of wisdom in commencement speeches.

She talked about such question as how to embrace failure and how to use imagination to better everyone's lives.

She also drew on stories from her own post-graduate years. As everyone by now knows, she had a famously precarious on-welfare existence in Scotland, before she wrote the Harry Potter novels, sold 450 million books worldwide and became the richest woman in Britain.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement that the book will allow those who weren't there in 2008 to read her "gift" of a speech (even though they can watch it on YouTube).

"I have heard and read many commencement speeches, none more moving and memorable than J.K. Rowling's," Faust said. "Years after her visit to Harvard, people still talk about it and still find inspiration in her singular evocation of the idea that living a meaningful life so often means daring to risk failure."