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Joanne Harris is a British writer and teacher.

She was born on July 3, 1964, in the small town of Barnsley in Yorkshire, England. Her mother was French and her father English, and they instilled in their daughter an interest in multicultural art and languages. As a child, Joanne spent a great deal of time in the sweet shop that belonged to her grandparents. The atmosphere of her childhood later found its way into her literary works.

Joanne studied at Wakefield Girls’ High School, then at Barnsley College, and later studied modern and medieval languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. After graduating from university, Joanne worked as a sales assistant, then spent 12 years teaching French at a boys’ school in Leeds, and taught a course in French literature at the University of Sheffield. While working as a teacher, she wrote three novels.

Joanne Harris’s first novel, The Evil Seed (translated into Russian in 2011 as Nebesnaya podruga), was published in 1989, but neither it nor her second novel, Sleep, Pale Sister (1993), was particularly successful. However, her third novel, the mystical melodrama Chocolat (1999), reached number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize in the novel category. Miramax Films bought the rights to adapt it for the screen. Thanks to the success of the film Chocolat starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, and Johnny Depp, the novel became even more popular worldwide.

In addition to novels for adults, Joanne Harris writes for children and teenagers. Her books have been published in more than fifty countries and have received numerous awards, not only British but international ones as well.

Joanne Harris is an honorary fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, holds honorary doctorates in literature from the Universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, and has served as a judge for the Whitbread Prize, the Orange Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

She plays bass guitar in a band she formed at the age of 16 and