Rowling’s wizardry earns her top spot

J.K. Rowling, the creator of boy wizard Harry Potter, was voted Britain’s greatest living writer in a survey released Thursday.

Readers of the Book Magazine ranked Rowling ahead of literary heavyweights including Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Harold Pinter and A.S. Byatt.

Rowling, who is writing the seventh and final Potter book, received almost three times as many votes as fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who is No. 2 on the list.

The magazine’s online poll allowed readers to choose from a list of 50 authors, or to add their own suggestion. The top 10: Rowling, Pratchett, McEwan, Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Pullman, Pinter, Nick Hornby, Byatt and, in a 10th-place tie, Jonathan Coe and John le Carre.