Joanne Harris Biography
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire on July 3, 1964, her mother is
French, her father English. She was educated at Wakefield Girls' High and
Barnsley Sixth Form College, and then read Modern and Mediaeval Languages at
Saint Catharine's College, Cambridge. After a number of heroic career
failures (rock musician, herbalist, accountant) she succumbed to genetic
pressure and became a French teacher for 12 years at a boys' grammar school in
Leeds, and later taught a French Literature course at Sheffield University.
Her first novel, The Evil Seed, was published in 1989, although she
strongly advises against reading it. Since then she has written Sleep,
Pale Sister (1993); Chocolat (1999); Blackberry Wine (2000);
Five Quarters of the Orange (2001), Coastliners (2002), Holy
Fools (2003), Jigs and Reels (2004), Gentlemen and Players
(2005), The French Market (2005), The Lollipop Shoes (2007), Runemarks (2008), Blueeyedboy (2010), and a cookbook-memoir My French Kitchen (2002). Her books
have been published in 40 countries and have won a number of British and
international awards.
She was awarded an honorary D.Lit (Doctor of Letters) by the University of
Huddersfield in 2003 and also by the University of Sheffield in 2004.
According to her website her hobbies include "mooching, lounging, strutting,
strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system, although she also
enjoys obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and
biscuits. She is not above bribery and would not necessarily refuse an offer
involving exotic travel, champagne or yellow diamonds from Graff. She plays bass
guitar in a band first formed when she was 16, is currently studying Old Norse
and lives with her husband Kevin and her daughter Anouchka, about 15 miles from
the place she was born."
This biography was last updated on 08/12/2011.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 2000 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that
some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date,
inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new, including your website URL if relevant.
