Joanne Harris

Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris, (born 3 July 1964) is an English author especially 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 medieval 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 Sheffield University, and for fifteen 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 whilst 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 No. 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" (re-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 two French cookbooks (co-written with Fran Warde), two collections of short stories and a number of dark psychological thrillers, including "Gentlemen and Players" 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. This book tells 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.
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.
Harris works from a shed in her back garden She is married and has one daughter, Anouchka. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband, Kevin.
Recurrent themes.
Some of Harris's recurrent themes are issues of identity, mother/child relationships, the emotional resonance of food, the magic and horror of everyday things, the outsider in the community, faith and superstition, and the joy of small pleasures. She has spoken out against entrenched sexism in the literary field, and she has discussed how she weaves a critique of sexist attitudes into her fiction:
Her writing style focuses on the senses, especially those of taste and smell. This may be due to the fact that Harris has a form of synaesthesia, in which she experiences colours as scents.
Her novels are often much darker than the film adaptation of "Chocolat" would lead us to suppose, and characters are often emotionally damaged or morally ambivalent. Father-figures are frequently absent, and mothers are often portrayed as controlling, harsh or even abusive, as in "Blueeyedboy" and "Five-Quarters of the Orange". Harris favours a first-person, dual-narrator narrative structure, often revisiting past events to cast light on current developments. This generally makes for complex characterisation, and even minor characters are often unusually well developed. Her books have a very strong sense of place, with settings that play as significant a role as do the characters themselves.
The fictional French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the setting of "Chocolat" and "Peaches for Monsieur le Curé", also features in "Blackberry Wine", and the fictional Yorkshire village of Malbry is the setting for both "Blueeyedboy" and "Gentlemen and Players", as well as numerous short stories. Malbry is also the name of Maddy's home in the "Rune" books, and seems to bear a certain resemblance to Harris's home village of Almondbury.
Awards and honours.
In 2013 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Harris is the holder of honorary doctorates in literature from the University of Huddersfield and the University of Sheffield, and is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge.
In 2017, she won a Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Award for perfume journalism.
Harris's books are now published in over fifty countries and have won a number of UK and international awards, including:
Bibliography.
Stories featured in the following anthologies: 