Joanne Harris

Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris, MBE (born 3 July 1964) is an English author, known for her award-winning novel Chocolat. It was later turned into the 2000 film Chocolat. 2Biography Harris was born in Barnsley in Yorkshire, to an English father and a French mother. Her parents were both academics, teaching modern languages and literature at a local grammar school. Her first language was French which caused divisions between her English family, where no-one spoke French, and her French family, where no-one spoke English. Both families had turbulent histories and a tradition of strong women, kitchen gardening, storytelling, folklore and cookery. 2Early life Harris began writing at an early age. She was strongly influenced by Grimms' Fairy Tales and Charles Perrault's work, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology. She was educated at Wakefield Girls' High School, Barnsley Sixth Form College, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where she studied modern and medieval languages. After a single, unsuccessful year as an accountant, which she describes as "like being trapped in a Terry Gilliam movie", she trained as a teacher at Sheffield University, and for fifteen years she taught modern languages, mostly at Leeds Grammar School, a boys' independent school in Yorkshir