Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire in 1964 to a French mother and an English father, both of whom were teachers of modern literature and languages at a grammar school. Harris's first language was French, which caused a divide between her English family, as no one else spoke French, and her French family, where there were no English speakers. Both sides of her family had turbulent histories and a tradition for the women to be strong, storytelling, cookery, folklore, and kitchen gardening.
Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, who has written fourteen novels, two cookbooks, and many short stories. Her work covers a wide range of genres, including magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology, and fantasy. She has also written a DR WHO novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game ZOMBIES, RUN!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television. In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Harris is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE by the Queen.
Harris's hobbies are listed in Who's Who as 'mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion'. She spends too much time on Twitter, plays flute and bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16, and works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire. Harris also holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has a form of synaesthesia which enables her to smell colours. Red, she says, smells of chocolate. She is active on social media, where she writes stories and gives writing tips as @joannechocolat; she posts writing seminars on YouTube; she performs in a live music and storytelling show with the #Storytime Band.