Never judge a book by its cover applies as much to best-selling author Joanne Harris as her novels. She is as enigmatic as they come, at odds with the fluidity and warmth of her writing.

Joanne Harris

While her written tone is engaging, her vocabulary gives nothing away. Compared with her rounded characters, she remains impassive.

She answers all the questions politely but with little expression, never enthusing. No, she never set out to be a published author, isn't interested in fame, remains unimpressed by Hollywood, and "found the whole thing surreal".

Even mentioning Johnny Depp didn't excite the woman: "I think he was just relieved to find he wasn't my type," was all she managed, "but he looks exactly the same in the flesh."

While anyone else would expand on these subjects Harris sits calmly waiting for the next question, so she can reply in fewer than ten syllables.

But with the proceeds pouring in from her five bestsellers, the film rights being bought up rapidly and Chocolat having already reached the big screen, why should she care?

Joanne was born in Yorkshire in 1964, to a French mother and an English father -- her parents met in France at a dance when her father was on a university exchange visit. They lived with Joanne's grandparents above the family sweet shop in Barnsley until she was three.

Being the product of two cultures in a less than cosmopolitan area, Joanne was isolated as a child. She learned to escape via books and story writing, and spent long holidays in France with her French grandparents and their extended family.

Joanne read modern and medieval languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. After trying to be a rock musician, herbalist, and accountant, she became a French teacher in Leeds for 12 years.

Her first two novels, The Evil Seed, published in 1989, and Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) were vampire/gothic horror and received little attention. It was not until she changed direction with Chocolat, published in 1999, that she achieved success.

Four more novels and a cookbook followed. Now she is publishing a book of short stories, Jigs and Reels.

She gave up teaching to write full-time and lives with her husband and daughter in Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

But no, her life hasn't changed much, she still has to juggle the same things and is constantly interrupted so she never has quite enough time left over to write: "But if you want to do something badly enough you just do it, rather than make lots of excuses about why you can't."

Even when she was receiving endless rejection slips, she wasn't discouraged. "I never expected to make a living out of writing books because almost nobody does, although in my wildest dreams I would fantasise about winning the lottery so I could write full-time."

Maybe her fans will get more out of her when she arrives at Oxford's Literary Festival on Sunday to discuss her new novel. Joanne will be at the Oxford Union, St Michael's Street, at 4pm. Tickets are £6.50.

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