Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris OBE FRSL (born 3 July 1964) is a British author, best known for her 1999 novel Chocolat, which was adapted into a film of the same name.

Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, to an English father and a French mother,[1] and lived above her grandparents' corner sweet shop until the age of three.

[8] Growing up, Harris was influenced by Norse mythology,[9] classic adventure stories including Jules Verne and Rider Haggard,[10] and the work of Shirley Jackson,[11] Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake and Emily Brontë.

Following the success in 2000 of the motion picture Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, with a screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs,[18] the book sold more than a million copies.

[21] Chocolat was followed by the novels Blackberry Wine (2000) and Five Quarters of the Orange (2001), described by The Guardian as "quirky, sensuous books set in the French countryside, in which food dominates events as a token of love, a bargaining chip, a gesture of defiance".

[26] In 2006, Harris published Gentlemen and Players, a psychological thriller set in the fictional boys' grammar school of St Oswald's, inspired by her time as a teacher.

[4] This was followed by two more St Oswald's books, Different Class and A Narrow Door, alongside two more psychological thrillers, Blueeyedboy and Broken Light,[27] all set in the fictional town of Malbry, inspired by the Yorkshire village of Almondbury.

[28][29] Harris has also published three novellas, A Pocketful of Crows, The Blue Salt Road, and Orfeia, loosely based on Child Ballads and illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, as well as two collections of short stories and numerous contributions to various charitable anthologies.

[41] Repeated themes in Harris' books include: food as a means of understanding character;[42] the dynamic between feasting and fasting; motherhood and the patriarchy;[43] tensions within communities; outsiders and outcasts;[44] religious intolerance and "the magic of everyday things".

[51] The Irish Times says: "The Chocolat novels are poignant literary explorations of universal themes of pleasure and denial, the dangers of dogma, xenophobia and racism and the enduring power of love and understanding to eradicate the traumas of the past,"[52] with a Locus review calling Harris "exceedingly gifted at producing vivid imagery".

[68] In 2024 Harris was announced[69] as the chief judge of the new Entente Littéraire Prize for French and UK Young Adult novels, a joint initiative of Queen Camilla and Brigitte Macron, sponsored by the Royal Society of Literature.

[71] In 2021, Harris was a guest on BBC's Desert Island Discs, where her chosen book was the collected works of Victor Hugo, her luxury was her own shed, and the record she "would save from the waves" was Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now".