Event 33

Joanne Harris is the internationally renowned and award-winning author of eighteen novels, plus novellas, scripts, short stories, libretti, lyrics, articles and most recently a self-help book for writers, Ten Things About Writing.  In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen starring Juliette Binoche and Jonny Depp.  She is an honorary Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge and is Chair of the Society of Authors.  Joanne is active on Twitter, where she writes stories and gives writing tips as @joannechocolat; she posts weekly writing seminars on YouTube; she performs in a live music and storytelling show with the Storytime Band; and she works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire.

Jo Willet was a television drama and comedy producer for most of her working life.  Her credits include Manhunt, Benidorm, Birds of a Feather, A Rather English Marriage and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee. She is the proud recipient of a BAFTA, a Royal Television Society Award and an International Emmy.    Jo  moved to Dorset in 2020 and started a new career writing historical biographies.  Her first book, The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu about the woman who brought inoculation against smallpox to the west was published during the Covid outbreak.  Her second, a biography of the actress Sarah Siddons, is due to be published next year.