Chat #24 - Joanne Harris
"To me, this is a call to arms"
This interview is free to read. Paid subscriptions support artist honoraria.
Joanne Harris is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty novels, including Chocolat, which was adapted into a Oscar nominated film. Her latest novel, Vianne, returns to the world of Chocolat and is published in paperback on 12 March 2026.
You can pre-order it here
Discover more about Joanne’s writing at joanne-harris.co.uk
03/03/2026, 11:02 - Finbarre:
My guest today was born in Barnsley, above a corner sweet shop, and went on to be one of Britain’s most distinctive storytellers. French was her first language. Her school nickname was The Frog. She used to teach French to grammar school boys and once accidentally lectured Ewan McGregor about letting his French get out of practice.
She has a green belt in jiu-jitsu, a cast-iron stomach, a weakness for red shoes, and owns every episode of Blake’s Seven. She’s been chased by an ostrich, is happiest by the sea, and her favourite colour is arterial red. Welcome to Tarot DMs, Joanne Harris!
03/03/2026, 11:02 - Joanne Harris:
Hello, Finbarre. It’s lovely to be with you.
03/03/2026, 11:03 - Finbarre:
Now we are recording this on March the 3rd, which will have the Night of the Blood Moon, which will be the perfect evening for me to try your very first book, Evil Seed, which I believe is based on pre-Raphaelite art. Just before we get into the tarot cards and all things gothic and spooky, can you tell me a little bit about that first book?
03/03/2026, 11:04 - Joanne Harris:
I think I wrote The Evil Seed mostly to annoy my mother, who had banned horror fiction from my life when I was growing up.
I was at Cambridge when I started it, and I was interested in local architecture. There was a cemetery in Grantchester nearby with a very intriguing grave and that started it off. The grave was a kind of Art Deco metal gate, and it was in the name of Esma Mary Cairns.
I made her the central character, who is effectively a vampire who lives in a university town, because the comings and goings and the youthful blood there is particularly attractive.
03/03/2026, 11:06 - Finbarre:
Was it those days in the early 90s, possibly listening to Shakespeare’s sisters “Stay” that drew you to tarot cards, or did they come later?
03/03/2026, 11:06 - Joanne Harris:
My great-grandmother introduced me to tarot cards. She had an old Marseille tarot pack and she used to teach me how to use them. She had a very particular way of using them. I don’t think that was everybody’s way, but I think she started me off on the idea of cards being both a game and also a magical sense of divination.
03/03/2026, 11:09 - Finbarre:
That sounds very reminiscent of the main character, Vianne, from your new book, and how she learns the more magical parts of life. But we’ll come to that very soon.
We’re going to use three tarot cards today. One is the Anchor card, one is the Wild card, and one is the Guest card. The first card will be the same one for every person I speak to this month, and that will be Strength.
These cards have been created by the Theatre Deli, and 55 artists from their community who were given completely free reign to create an interpretation of the cards in their own style.
So, are you ready for your first one?
03/03/2026, 11:10 - Joanne Harris:
Absolutely!
03/03/2026, 11:10 - Finbarre:
03/03/2026, 11:11 - Finbarre:
That’s a very spectacular interpretation of Strength there. What vibes do you get from that card?
03/03/2026, 11:12 - Joanne Harris:
What a very interesting pack and what an interesting company too. I’m so glad you introduced me to them. I’m a bit of a collector of tarot packs of one sort or another.
This one particularly seems interesting because there is embedded into it the idea of gender and the idea that Strength is not necessarily connected to one type of person. Yes, I like this card. I can see a lot in it. There’s the sun. There is eternity. There is a masculine coded creature and a feminine coded creature but may not be either of those things. I think this is actually one entity with several parts to it. I like it very much.
03/03/2026, 11:13 - Finbarre:
I absolutely love hearing other people’s interpretations of cards because everybody sees something in a card that’s utterly different to everyone else.
I mean, for me, this just reminds me of sunny afternoons in Barcelona, walking down a street you’ve never been down and seeing a piece of street art that gives you goosebumps.
And it would be something like this.
So the question I’m going to ask you based on this card is, as someone who speaks out about author’s rights, where does your determination come from?
03/03/2026, 11:15 - Joanne Harris:
I think creators generally need somebody to stand up for their rights.
They have often been seen as slightly magical creatures who exist outside of money and rent and groceries. They’re often taken advantage of because the passion that they have in their work.
I was chair of the Society of Authors, the Authors Union, for four years. I learned a lot about how that organization works and what it does on behalf of authors. And I realized that a lot of authors are not a member, even though they have a right to be a member. They don’t realize that perhaps they do need somebody on their side, particularly if they don’t have an agent, somebody to look at their contracts to find out if they’re exploitative, somebody to tell them that it’s all right to ask to be paid for the time that you spend and the work that you do. I think it makes sense.
I didn’t know any of those things when I was starting off. There was nobody to tell me.
I think that because I have a bit of a platform now, it’s important that I get out and tell people who are perhaps in that situation themselves now.
03/03/2026, 11:18 - Finbarre:
Out of interest has modern technology in 2026 made it easier or more difficult for writers.
03/03/2026, 11:19 - Joanne Harris:
In many ways, both. I think in some ways, the existence of digital technology has helped writers because given the state of trad publishing and its increasing risk aversion, it’s more and more difficult for young, enterprising, diverse authors to find a place for themselves. It’s much easier to self-publish. It’s much easier to get a market self-publishing, which is a great thing. But it’s also much easier to pirate books, to steal work. And of course, now with the advent of generative AI, it’s much easier to steal work and then to create and monetize work around it, which has nothing to do with the author anymore. But it’s seen by various people who don’t really understand art as the future.
03/03/2026, 11:21 - Finbarre:
Now, just before we move on to the next card on the subject of technology and the creative process, I spotted that you have a preference for using a particular laptop and a particular font.
Now, as a typography nerd, I love my fonts. I had never heard of the one that you choose. It’s the Aparajita font. Is that correct? Which I thought was mainly for the Hindi characters. Just tell me a little bit about that. How did you discover it and what’s it like using it?
03/03/2026, 11:22 - Joanne Harris:
Well, I used to use that one because it was on my first laptop. It’s not available anymore. So now I use Calibri when I’m creating something and I use Times New Roman when I’m editing because I find that changing the font is a vital part of the re-education of the brain to try and allow you to see things with new eyes. But yes, like you, I find fonts very interesting and very important.
The old Aparajita font, I really liked it just because I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. It was striking. I didn’t want to use something that I already saw in books because that would be for later down the line. So that’s when I used it. But unfortunately, it just seems to have disappeared from all of the font packages that you get nowadays.
03/03/2026, 11:25 - Finbarre:
I think you may have sent me on a side quest today. I’ll be seeing if I can track that one down myself to add to my rather excessive collection, which is silly even though I just write pretty much exclusively in Atkinson Hyperlegible. Okay, time for card two. This is the wild card. This is one that I will be shuffling as we speak.
I’m in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, and whereabouts are you today?
03/03/2026, 11:26 - Joanne Harris:
I am in Almondbury near Huddersfield in Yorkshire.
03/03/2026, 11:27 - Finbarre:
An absolutely splendid part of the country. I’m a little bit biased because my parents live just up the road over in Hebden Bridge. And after watching the recent TV series of Riot Women, I’m going to have to come down and just re-enjoy the countryside there.
I mean, it’s not too far away being here in Nottinghamshire, but the countryside up there is better. I hate to say.
Right, I’m shuffling these cards.
I either say stop or write stop and we’ll see what we get.
03/03/2026, 11:28 - Joanne Harris: 👍
03/03/2026, 11:29 - Finbarre:
My cat Bexley disapproves of this one it seems
03/03/2026, 11:29 - Joanne Harris: Oh. 🤣
03/03/2026, 11:29 - Joanne Harris:
He may disapprove, but he is the most excellent cat.
03/03/2026, 11:30 - Finbarre:
Thank you so much. He’s a very distinguished, learned-looking gentleman in his little tuxedo fur there. He’s an old chap. He’s, I want to say about 16, maybe about 17, something like that. But, you know, he’s still living his cat life, bouncing around like a little rubber ball in the garden and flipping himself with his little paws in the air and his tummy exposed when he wants some fuss.
Otherwise, he’ll just stay well away from humans. And this card, it seems. I’ll send you the picture.
03/03/2026, 11:30 - Finbarre:
03/03/2026, 11:31 - Joanne Harris:
Oh, I like this one. This is a good one, The Ace of Swords. To me, it’s about power and breakthrough and action, which is great because I’m feeling much more inclined to action having been pretty much in hibernation of the whole of winter. So to me, this is a call to arms. And yes, and I’m in the mood to answer it.
03/03/2026, 11:32 - Joanne Harris:
I’m assuming Bexley dislikes it because he’s just ready for another full month’s hibernation!
03/03/2026, 11:34 - Finbarre:
He’s quite a judgmental creature in that he endures my company, but he’s very much my wife’s cat. He is an absolute kitten for her. Now for me, I have a ginger nonsense called Beigli. Like all ginger cats, he just sleeps all day and night and any other time that he can find.
He is the most fluffy, lovable creature. I don’t think he’s ever gone for me in his life. I don’t know if he has any brain cells at all, but he has many purrs.
03/03/2026, 11:35 - Joanne Harris:
I had cats for a long time, but I don’t have any now. So I have a time sharing my son’s cats instead. My son has three cats, a blind one, a deaf one, and a very anxious, hyperactive one. So they’re basically a children’s book waiting to happen.
03/03/2026, 11:36 - Joanne Harris:
03/03/2026, 11:36 - Joanne Harris: Phobos, Deimos and Alecto.
03/03/2026, 11:37 - Finbarre: Three wonderful voidfloofs!
03/03/2026, 11:37 - Joanne Harris: 💕
03/03/2026, 11:37 - Finbarre:
I had to delve into the cobwebs of my knowledge of Greek mythology there, because I was going Phobos. Yeah, that’s one of Mars’ moons. Deimos, again, you’ve got your fear and your terror there. And I was thinking, who’s the third one? Who’s Alecto? Of course, that’s one of the furies, isn’t it? Do you know what? I’m completely digressing. We need to get back to your card. One moment.
03/03/2026, 11:39 - Finbarre:
You know, I could talk about cats all day. Okay, your question regarding the Ace of Swords is, and because it’s a card about truth and clarity, and often new beginnings, I’d like to talk about Vianne your new book and how it returns you to the world of Chocolat. And it sounds like from a fresh angle, but what truths did you want to state in Vianne that you weren’t ready or able to express in your previous work?
03/03/2026, 11:41 - Joanne Harris:
The thing is, when you have created a character like Vianne and shared a life with her, shared adventures in motherhood and shared time, and we have shaped each other in important ways.
When I created her with Chocolat, I was the mother of a young child and so was she, and it was the only thing that we had in common.
When I revisited her later, she was the mother of an adolescent and then an older adolescent and then a child who had left home because those were the stages of motherhood that I’d been through.
Having left her at the end of The Strawberry Thief with really nowhere to go, she’s found her place, but her children have left home and she no longer has the identity that she thought she had.
I thought maybe this is the time to look back on her origin story.
And because I’m in a similar situation, I thought, yes, maybe this is the time for looking back. I think you’ve had to have had a certain amount of life experience to be able to do that.
And so I took her back in time to a previous iteration of herself and tried to understand her seeking identity and her finding herself as a mother so that eventually I can write about her moving on in later life.
03/03/2026, 11:44 - Finbarre:
Your new story features sunny Marseille, one of the most sun-kissed parts of France.
Was there a temptation to set the book there and maybe research one of the loveliest parts of France, possibly away from the gloom of Yorkshire?
I mean, it would be the perfect cure of SAD, the seasonal affective disorder, which I know you and many people suffer from, especially these gloomy months.
So it was a temptation to place it somewhere so you could have some nice holidays away.
03/03/2026, 11:45 - Joanne Harris:
That would have been very nice. But I was writing about the past. I was writing about the late 80s and early 90s. And so I was writing about a version of Marseille, which isn’t quite there anymore. So I had to more or less do it from memory. I’ve not quite managed to master the technique of taking tax-deductible holidays in far-flung places. Perhaps I should have done, but it’s not something that I generally do. I find it most easy to write about things where I’m not seeing them, where I have to look into memory and imagination to conjure what’s going on. Because otherwise, the temptation just to go outside and enjoy the sunshine is just overwhelming.
03/03/2026, 11:47 - Finbarre:
Going back to the spirit of the Ace of Swords, what techniques did you use to strip away the experience that you’ve now accumulated over the years to be a previous self?
03/03/2026, 11:49 - Joanne Harris:
I think a lot of it has to do with memory. It helped enormously that I was recording the audiobook of Chocolat as I was writing Vianne because it meant that I could go back in time 25 years to that version of her and of my own voice, which is slightly different. It has evolved over the years.
But remembering what it’s like to be 21, to be abrasive and at the same time cocksure, but also painfully insecure about everything. I tried to give her a little of that experience and the experience of being pregnant and not knowing what kind of parent you’re going to be and the experience of not quite fitting into your environment.
I think it’s a little bit like method acting. It’s important to look at things that you might have in common, experiences that you might share with the protagonist, and try to bring as much authenticity to the role as possible.
And of course, I used perfume. I always do when I’m writing a book. I select a perfume to go with the book, as much as Stanislavski said that actors should do when looking at a role.
So I went back to the perfume that I had used when I was writing Chocolat, and I found another iteration. That was Chanel No. 5. I found another iteration of it, Coromandel by Chanel, which I thought would about suit the time and also the general vibe. And I used that to have a sort of emotional trigger and an entry into the process.
03/03/2026, 11:53 - Finbarre:
As you’re describing how evocative smells can be as part of your process, you’ve got me thinking that, and this is something that people think that I’m a weirdo for doing, is using certain smells to be almost like emotional signposts.
So I will say, for example, if I’m going to work and I hear some good news or I receive a message that I like, or I see some baby bunnies frolicking the field or whatever it is that I’m doing as I’m walking to the office.
If I see something that makes me happy, I will either reach for a piece of lavender that I have in my pocket or a piece of dill. And both of those are ways of me marking the moment with a sense of smell.
So when I’m in a place where I’m feeling a bit blue, I can just take it out, smell whatever it is, and be taken to a happier place, a happier emotional state.
And it’s incredible the power that smell has. Did I read correctly that you’re synesthetic?
03/03/2026, 11:54 - Finbarre: (My extremely neurotypical confessions!)
03/03/2026, 11:55 - Joanne Harris:
Yes, basically I have a kind of synesthesia where I smell colours, particularly bright colours in sunlight. So at the moment everything just smells a lot happier than it did in winter. I think this is probably why I write so much about colour and scent and taste because those are the ways in which I tend to approach the world primarily.
I think you’re right. Scent is an amazing overlooked emotional trigger and we should all be more conscious of it. And I’m surprised that more people aren’t using it in writing where there’s so much emphasis on the visual and on sounds, but much less so on taste and scent.
03/03/2026, 11:57 - Finbarre:
Joanne, we’re now on card three, and this is the gift card. This is the one that’s been given to you by my previous guest, and that person was CJ DeBarra, and they’re the writer of Neuroqueer and Queer Nottingham, Volumes 1 and 2, looking at the night scene and the community, historically, that’s been here in Nottingham. It was a wonderful read.
Okay, they have left you this card, and it could be better. It is one of my favorite cards, possibly in a way that you might not like.
03/03/2026, 11:58 - Finbarre: *drum roll*
03/03/2026, 11:58 - Joanne Harris: 🥺
03/03/2026, 11:58 - Finbarre:
03/03/2026, 11:59 - Finbarre: The Hanged Man (reversed)
03/03/2026, 12:00 - Joanne Harris:
Oh, that’s a complicated one. I mean, I tend to like the Hanged Man. And for a start, he looks quite happy where he is and especially reversed. I can see his face. I’ve always associated the hanged man with Odin, who was hanged for knowledge. Maybe this is less about knowledge and more about self-knowledge if it’s reversed.
Perhaps it means making difficult scrutinies of oneself and of one’s motivations. Either way, I shall think about this one for a long time. I do like the card, though. I like its design very much. Usually the hanged man looks quite sinister, but this one looks as if he’s got something to impart.
03/03/2026, 12:03 - Finbarre:
I’m absolutely with you on the Odin symbolism, the idea of the Allfather reaching down, I believe hanging on the Yggdrasil, the world tree, reaching down to try and grab the runes that have been left there by the Norns.
For some reason, the image of that always blurs into the painting by William Blake for me as well, of God reaching down, which has almost a very similar pose.
Okay. Of course, we’re flipping that a little.
03/03/2026, 12:03 - Finbarre:
03/03/2026, 12:03 - Finbarre:
03/03/2026, 12:03 - Joanne Harris: Absolutely.
03/03/2026, 12:03 - Joanne Harris:
Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. Knowledge is never comfortable, and it always comes with choices and a price.
03/03/2026, 12:04 - Finbarre:
For your third question on that price, have you ever felt creatively trapped by other people’s expectations?
03/03/2026, 12:05 - Joanne Harris:
I try very hard not to be. I generally tell myself that I’m not here to live up to people’s expectations, but to try to do the best I can at the time. And so generally, that hasn’t served me very well professionally, because instead of going down the formulaic route and making a lot of money, I have generally followed what needed to be written or what I felt needed to be written.
And sometimes that’s caused problems. Publishers haven’t always understood it, particularly not American publishers who would, I think, like things to be much more linear and predictable. But I never said I was going to be that. And if that’s what they think I am, then they probably don’t know me at all.
03/03/2026, 12:07 - Finbarre:
On that, I’m curious about the ideas that you become motivated to follow. Do you have piles of notebooks brimming with ideas and when you have enough, you put them into a story? Is there something else, some other muse that guides you?
03/03/2026, 12:08 - Joanne Harris:
I do have notebooks, but just so that I don’t forget things, and I tend actually to forget where the notebooks are most of the time. But generally, it’s not a very linear process. I have a sort of rattlebag of ideas, and I find that the most persistent ones have traction, and they follow me around until they find the germ of a story, and then they attach themselves to other ideas.
And it grows in a much more organic way than working out what it’s going to be in the book, having a synopsis, and then working in a kind of structural way from there. That’s not generally the process that works best for me.
03/03/2026, 12:11 - Finbarre:
Thank you for that peep behind the curtain. And if I may ask you how tarot has influenced your writing. So as the Hanged Person reaches down for divine intervention, the cards that you mentioned, your grandmother teaching you how to read, I understand of, or the symbolism at least, is featured in your work. I’d love to know a little bit more about how they guide you. Do you pull a card as you’re writing? Do you have particular archetypes in mind? Do tell.
03/03/2026, 12:13 - Joanne Harris:
I think my approach has changed over time as I’ve learned more about the cards and what they’ve meant to different people.
I was very much influenced by Jung’s ideas on the tarot and on the archetypes there because I studied him at university.
I still use them, not daily, but fairly regularly.
And with certain books, I use the imagery a lot, particularly with Vianne’s books,
because her mother uses the tarot as a kind of means of determining their course through the world as they travel. And I also find the images useful because they can be so meaningful in so many different ways to so many different people.
So I’ve used it as a way of a kind of means of insight into Vianne’s character to show what she sees and to try to imagine why she sees it.
I think that as with all really good forms of divination, as with the runes, as with the I Ching, it’s really very much about finding information that you already know and finding ways to decode it. So to me, it’s a psychological tool as well as a tool of divination.
03/03/2026, 12:15 - Finbarre:
Excellent. Well, Joanne, if you have a deck there, I’d like you to give the cards a little bit of a shuffle, maybe introduce the deck and then pull one of the cards that feels right for the next person I’ll speak to. And I’ll say it’s from you.
03/03/2026, 12:16 - Joanne Harris:
Okay, well, this deck is the Alistair Crowley, Frida Harris deck, the Thoth tarot, which I like very much. I like its imagery and I always find interesting, different things every time. So that’s what I’m shuffling right now. And this is the one I’m pulling out.
03/03/2026, 12:16 - Joanne Harris:
03/03/2026, 12:17 - Joanne Harris:
I really like this one. It’s the Queen of Swords. I love the perspectives of it. I love the construction, the pyramidical construction of the card itself. And it’s a really interesting one in terms of the different kinds of meanings you can find in it depending on where you happen to be in life.
03/03/2026, 12:19 - Finbarre:
I had the rare privilege of seeing Lady Frieda Harris’s original artwork at the Warburg Institute last year, actually for a birthday present. My wife took me down. And seeing these in person is electrifying. This is a wonderful card and whoever it is will very much appreciate it, Joanne.
Thank you so much for appearing on Tarot DMs today. It has been, it’s been wonderful. It’s been a exploration of author’s rights. We’ve talked about your previous work and of course, cats as well!
03/03/2026, 12:20 - Joanne Harris:
I’m so jealous that you got to see the original artwork of that. I would love to see it.
I’ve so enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much, Finbarre. It’s been lovely meeting you, and I hope whoever the next guest is enjoys the card. Bye-bye.
03/03/2026, 12:21 - Finbarre:
As we close, don’t forget, dear listener, that Joanne Harris’ new book, Vianne, is out now, and it’s a return to a much-loved character and a story that so many readers have been waiting for.
Thank you for listening to Tarot DMs. Until next time.