Joanne Harris

Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris (born 3 July 1964) is an English-French author, best known for her novel '' Chocolat'' (1999), which was adapted the following year for the film '' Chocolat''.

Early life

Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, to an English father and a French mother. Both of her parents were teachers of modern languages and literature at a local grammar school. Her first language was French, which caused divisions between her English family, where nobody spoke French, and her French family, where nobody spoke English. Both families had turbulent histories and a tradition of strong women, kitchen gardening, storytelling, folklore and cookery..

Career

Harris began writing at an early age. She was strongly influenced by ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' and Charles Perrault's work, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology. She was educated at Wakefield Girls' High School, Barnsley Sixth Form College, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where she studied modern and mediaeval languages.

After a single, unsuccessful year as an accountant, which she describes as "like being trapped in a Terry Gilliam movie", she trained as a teacher at the University of Sheffield, and for 15 years she taught modern languages, mostly at Leeds Grammar School, a boys' independent school in Yorkshire. She also taught at Sheffield University, lecturing on aspects of French literature and film. During this period she worked on a number of book projects; ''The Evil Seed'', ''Sleep, Pale Sister'' and ''Chocolat'' were published while she was still teaching.

Her first novel, ''The Evil Seed'', was published in 1989, with only limited success. A second novel, ''Sleep, Pale Sister'', shows the way in which her style developed from horror-pastiche to literary ghost story. In 1999 her third novel, ''Chocolat'', a darkly magical modern folk-tale, thematically based on food and set in the Gers region of France, reached number 1 in the ''Sunday Times'' bestseller list. The book won the Creative Freedom Award in 1999 and was shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. The film rights were sold to David Brown and developed by Miramax Pictures. The success of the motion picture, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, brought Harris worldwide recognition, and in 2012 she became one of only four female members of the "Millionaires Club", the elite group of authors who have achieved a million sales of a single book in the UK since records began.

Since ''Chocolat'', all of Harris's books have been UK bestsellers. Her wide-ranging choice of subject matter means that her work often defies categorization, and she has a predilection for difficult or challenging issues. She has written three more novels in the '' Chocolat'' series, continuing the adventures of Vianne Rocher; '' The Lollipop Shoes'' (titled ''The Girl With No Shadow'' in the US), '' Peaches for Monsieur le Curé'' (''Peaches for Father Francis'' in the US), and '' The Strawberry Thief'' – published 4 April 2019, as well as three French cookbooks (co-written with Fran Warde), two collections of short stories and a number of dark psychological thrillers, including '' Gentlemen and Players'', ''Different Class'' and ''Blueeyedboy''.

In August 2007, she published ''Runemarks'', a mythpunk/fantasy novel based on Norse mythology, aimed at both children and adults. The sequel, ''Runelight'', was published in 2011, and since then the ''Rune'' books have acquired an enthusiastic following alongside the fans of Vianne Rocher. Continuing the Norse mythology theme, ''The Gospel of Loki'' was published in February 2014, with ''The Testament of Loki'' coming out in 2017. These books continue the tale of the rise and fall of the gods of Asgard from the point of view of Loki the trickster.

In 2011, she contributed a short story, ''Never Cut A Hawthorn'', to ''Why Willows Weep''an anthology which supports the Woodland Trust. This is only one of the many stories she has contributed to charity anthologies.

She has also published three novellas – ''A Pocketful of Crows'', ''The Blue Salt Road'', and ''Orfeia'', all loosely based on Child Ballads – which were illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, and in 2021, ''Honeycomb'', a collection of original fairytales, illustrated by Charles Vess. She has also authored three cookbooks.

She is currently Chair of the Society of Authors, and sits on the Board of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.

She is a patron of the charities Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Plan UK, and has travelled to Togo and to the Congo to report on their work. An account of her visit to the Congo was published in ''Writing on the Edge'', a collection of essays by noted literary figures, with photographs by Tom Craig, in 2010. She has also donated short stories for inclusion in anthologies published by a number of charities, notably Piggybank Kids, the Woodland Trust, the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition and Breast Cancer UK. In 2021, Harris was a guest on BBC's ''Desert Island Discs'' and talked openly about her diagnosis and ongoing treatment of her breast cancer in 2020. She also suffers from seasonal affective disorder.

Media

Harris was a guest on the long-running BBC
...