The Writers Write Interview – Joanne Harris

Writers Write creates writing resources and shares writing tips. In this post, we share our interview with Joanne Harris.

Joanne Harris (born 3 July 1964) is an Anglo-French author who writes novels, cookbooks, and short stories. She has written in many genres including magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology, and fantasy. She is perhaps best known for her novel, Chocolat, which was adapted for film.

Visit her website or follow her on Twitter: @Joannechocolat

The Writers Write Interview With Joanne Harris

Author: Joanne Harris
Birthday: 3 July 1964
Date: 5 July 2007
Where: @ Home, UK
The Books: The Lollipop Shoes and Runemarks

1. Who is your favourite hero of fiction?
Nigel Molesworth, schoolboy hero of Down With Skool and many other works, existentialist thinker and scourge of Masters everywhere, whose subversive lifestyle and atrocious spelling never fail to make me smile.

2. What is your most treasured possession?
I have far too many possessions. But my good-luck piece is a stone that I picked up from a beach in France on a particularly happy day two summers ago. I travel everywhere with it.

3. Which living person do you most dislike?
The bullies who made my daughter’s life a misery during her last school year.

4. What is your greatest fear?
Loss.

5. Who or what has been the greatest love of your life?
My husband, Kevin and my daughter, Anouchka.

6. What is your greatest regret?
I’m too young to have regrets.

7. If you could choose to be a character in a book, who would it be?
Mowgli or Tarzan of the Apes.

8. Which book have you read the most in your lifetime?
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. It’s one of those works that grows with you, so that you can experience it quite differently at forty from way you did at fourteen.

9. What is your favourite journey?
The journey home.

10. Cats or Dogs? Which do you prefer?
Cats.

11. What quality do you most admire in a woman?
Self-confidence without arrogance. .

12. Which book that you’ve written is your favourite?
I’m proudest of Five Quarters of the Orange, simply because it was so difficult emotionally to write – but the one I’ve enjoyed writing most is my new fantasy book, Runemarks.

13. What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Write because you want to write – not because of what you think you’ll achieve. Write what you want to write, and not what you think other people want. And most of all, enjoy what you do – that way, other people may enjoy it too.

14. What are your favourite names?
I like names by association. Right now my favourite is Benjamin.

15. What do you do as a hobby?
I play bass guitar and flute in the same band I first joined when I was 16.

16. What are your top 3 books?
Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, and Fahrenheit 451.

17. Where do you get your greatest ideas for writing?
In the greenhouse, in summer, at 7.00 am.

Photograph: Joanne Harris Credit: Kyte Photography

posted by Amanda Patterson, July 2007

If you want to read more of our interviews, click here