Joanne Harris

This interview has a special place in my heart because Joanne Harris, the prolific author known for the gorgeous Chocolat, among other things, was the first person I ever interviewed. I spoke to her for my university newspaper 20 years ago, and she was, thankfully, very nice then and remains very nice today. I’m not sure I’ve spoken to a more adventurous novelist. Joanne fearlessly tackles whichever genre she is interested in at the time and indeed isn’t fond of the notion of genres at all actually. We talk about her excellent new thriller, A Narrow Door, and how it felt to write that compared with, for example, her 'gastromances' (not a word she’s keen on, completely understandably) such as Chocolat. We also discuss her making (and burning) a sculpture out of rejection letters, rewriting her fantasy novel Runemarks from scratch because her daughter wanted to see it published and how mistakes are all signposts on the road to success. Oh, and also the time she met Harvey Weinstein. You can find me on Twitter at @francescasteele and Instagram at @Francesca_steele Please do rate or review the podcast on your Apple podcast app – it helps more people find out about Write-Off, and also I just really like seeing the reviews! This season is sponsored by the wonderful Jericho Writers Listeners of the podcast can get an exclusive 15% discount on membership by going to and entering the code Write-Off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Joanne Harris online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Joanne Harris is an episode from Write-Off with Francesca Steele by Francesca Steele.

This episode is 47:45 long.

This episode was published on Apr 14, 2022.

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