Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris, known as Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL), was born on 3 July 1964 in Barnsley, England, UK. She is an Anglo-French author, renowned for her diverse body of work that includes fourteen novels, two cookbooks, and numerous short stories.

She studied Modern and Mediæval Languages at Cambridge and spent fifteen years as a teacher during which time she published three novels, including the acclaimed Chocolat (1999), which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.

Since then, Harris has published 19 more novels, novellas, short stories, game scripts, libretti for two short operas, several screenplays, a stage musical with Howard Goodall, and three cookbooks. Her works are now published in over 50 countries and have won several British and international awards.

She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, possesses honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, and has been a judge for many prestigious literary prizes. In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and received an OBE.

Joanne Harris is a passionate advocate for authors’ rights, serving as the Chair of the Society of Authors (SOA) for four years and as a board member of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) from 2018 to 2024.

In her personal life, she enjoys "mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting, and quiet subversion of the system." Harris works from a shed in her garden, plays in the band she first joined at 16, and lives with her husband in a little wood in Yorkshire.