Melissa Anelli
| Melissa Anelli | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 27, 1979 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, webmistress |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Georgetown University |
| Notable works | Harry, A History |
| Website | |
| penbitten |
|
Melissa Anelli (born December 27, 1979) is an American author and webmistress. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Harry, A History, which chronicles the Harry Potter phenomenon with exclusive interview material and a foreword written by Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. Anelli is also the full-time webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron, a commercial fansite devoted to the Harry Potter franchise for fans.
Anelli also is one of three hosts of the Leaky Cauldron's official podcast PotterCast, which talks about various aspects of the Harry Potter books, movies, video games and more. The podcast conducted a two-episode interview with Rowling in late December 2007, after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Anelli was born in Brooklyn and raised on Staten Island, New York. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, where she served as an editor for The Hoya. She became fascinated with the Harry Potter books in 2000, and active in Harry Potter fandom the following summer, shortly before the September 11 attacks in the United States. She says she was drawn into the series by its underlying message of tolerance and love, which she believes was especially needed as the United States geared for war.
In 2001, Anelli joined the all-volunteer staff of The Leaky Cauldron, a relatively new web site devoted to the Harry Potter universe. On her own initiative, Anelli began contacting individuals at Warner Brothers, which was producing the Harry Potter films, and at Scholastic, which published the Harry Potter books in the United States. It took a year before the movie studio took her seriously and began answering her questions with reportable information, and a longer period of time before the publishers agreed to do the same. By the end of 2002, The Leaky Cauldron was receiving over 500,000 hits per day. By November 2008, largely under Anelli's influence, the site became the second most popular English-language Harry Potter fansite, with over 1 million hits per day.
...
Wikipedia