Rowling has supported a long list of charities including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Lumos (formerly the Children's High Level Group).

Time magazine named Rowling as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans.

Rowling was featured at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London where she read a few lines from J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan as part of a tribute to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. An inflatable representation of Lord Voldemort and other children's literary characters accompanied her reading.

According to a Scholastic interview, Rowling's favorite food is sushi. Her least favorite food is tripe.

Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, Rowling's publishers asked that she use two initials rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K (for "Kathleen", her grandmother's first name) as the second initial of her pen name.