Author Joanne Harris on the north of England's rich literary heritage

Joanne Harris: My father was from Barnsley; my mother from Vitré, in northwestern France. Both of them were teachers at Barnsley Girls’ High School, and French was my first language, which made me a bit of an oddity in Barnsley in the Sixties.

We lived about half a mile away from the school, in a bungalow next to the railway bank. During the summer holidays we would go to France for six weeks to visit my mother’s family, but when I was at home, I was often left to my own devices.

I used to play on the waste ground between the railway and the canal, where there were flooded mine shafts and ash pits and slag heaps, where I would go hunting for relics, or picking wild spinach or rhubarb or blackberries for my grandfather, who lived nearby. 

JH: Even as a small child, I was always inventing stories and games, and as soon I learnt to write, I began to write them down. I started out copying the styles of authors I liked, which meant that my earliest stories were flamboyant adventure stories, inspired by writers like Rider Haggard and Jules Verne.

JH: I don’t usually think in terms of genre. I like my writing to be as immersive as possible, engaging all the senses. Because I have a kind of synaesthesia that allows me to smell colours, I find that a lot of my writing is dominated by colour and scent. That is why some people find it especially evocative. 

JH: I live close to Haworth, and I’ve always been an admirer of the Brontë sisters, especially Emily: her intense connection with the landscape, her fearless subversion of tradition, her uncanny perception.

I first read Wuthering Heights when I was 15, and have re-read it every five years or so since, rediscovering it anew at different stages of life experience.

JH: Both have given me different perspectives; different literary traditions, different culinary traditions, different kinds of folklore and linguistic aesthetic. In both cultures I’ve had the opportunity to live in and observe the interactions of small communities.

But being the product of two cultures has given me a particular insight into the outsider’s role and the significance of belonging. Perhaps that’s why so many of my protagonists—including Vianne, the protagonist of Chocolat—are outsiders. 

JH: It’s wonderful to be honoured for my work, although my time as a judge has taught me that the awards system can be quite narrow in its focus: there are a lot of amazingly talented writers who never win awards, but who are nevertheless just as original and influential as those who do.

JH: As a teenager I worked for a summer on the Coppergate dig in York, which later became the site of the Jorvik centre.

I’ve always enjoyed York, with its incredible wealth of history, its cobbled streets and its wonderful folklore; and I love Whitby for many of the same reasons, not least for its abundance of ghost stories…

JH: There has always been something of a north-south divide where the literary world is concerned. It’s not that there are no authors in the north (I live within just a few of miles of Simon Armitage, Ian McMillan and Milly Johnson, to name but three), but the London community of critics, academics and salonistas is so influential that the rest of the country is sometimes neglected.

It would be nice to see more support for writers and artists who are neither London-based nor media-adjacent, as well as for working class creators and those from underrepresented groups. 

JH: I’m just finishing a novel called Vianne, which is the prequel to Chocolat. It should come out in early 2025. It’s the story of how Vianne Rocher, arriving pregnant and alone in Marseille in the late Eighties, found her vocation in chocolate, and what unleashed the events that set her on the path to Lansquenet, and the story of Chocolat.

JH: I’m reading Curandera by Irenosen Okojie.  Set in 17th-century Cape Verde and present-day London, it’s an astonishing novel about a group of people brought together by their fascination with ritual, miracles and a life beyond the mundane. I’m also reading The Chain, an incredible memoir by Chimene Suleyman, billed as: The Relationships That Break Us, the Women Who Rebuild Us. It’s intimate, moving, often angry, but ultimately empowering. I love it.

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Cover image © Kyte Photography