Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is a British author, best known for her 1999 novel Chocolat, which was adapted into a film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She was born on 3 July 1964 in Barnsley, England, to a French mother and an English father. Harris studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge University and worked as a teacher for fifteen years.

She has written 19 more novels, novellas, short stories, game scripts, libretti for two short operas, screenplays, a stage musical with Howard Goodall, and three cookbooks. Her works have been published in over 50 countries and have won numerous awards.

Harris served as the Chair of the Society of Authors for four years and was on the Board of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society from 2018 to 2024. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield.

She is an advocate for authors’ rights and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022. Harris's hobbies include mooching, lounging, strumming, and quiet subversion of the system. She resides with her husband in a small wood in Yorkshire and works from a shed in her garden.