Joanne Harris Interview on WritersFM

As mentioned recently in this blog post, Joanne Harris is the latest big-name writer to be interviewed on WritersFM, WCCL's Internet radio station for writers.

Joanne Harris is the British author of around a dozen novels, the most famous of which is Chocolat, which was also made into a film starring Juliette Binoche. Her latest novel, Runemarks, published in August 2007, is her first book for children and young adults. Her official website is at www.joanne-harris.co.uk, or clicking on any of the links from her name in this post will take you to the Wikipedia article about her.

The WritersFM Interview with Joanne was conducted by the station manager, Karl Moore, as usual. The interview runs to about an hour and is entertaining as well as being informative. As you might expect of a former school-teacher, Joanne is a clear and articulate interviewee.

Fans of Joanne Harris will particularly enjoy listening as she talks about her various books, and Chocolat in particular. As mentioned previously, I've only read one Joanne Harris novel so far, Gentlemen and Players, but I definitely plan to read some of her other books now. Actually, though, I thought the last twenty minutes or so of the interview were the most interesting, where Joanne talks about her writing methods and offers some tips for aspiring novelists. I recommend having a pen and paper in hand when listening to this!

To hear the interview, you can either wait for it to come around on the station's normal rotation, download it as a podcast, or (probably the easiest option) stream it from the radio station's Podcasts page. As with all WritersFM broadcasts, you will need to have a broadband/DSL Internet connection.

Happy listening!

What would YOU ask Joanne Harris?

My colleague Karl Moore of the online radio station WritersFM needs your help!

He has managed to line up an interview with the British author Joanne Harris this Thursday, 20 March. And he has asked me to put out a request to readers of my blog for any questions he can ask her.

For those who may not know, Joanne Harris is the author of around a dozen novels, perhaps the most famous of which is Chocolat, which was also made into a film starring Juliette Binoche. Her latest novel, Runemarks, published in 2007, is her first book for children and young adults. Her official website is at http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/, or clicking on any of the links from her name in this post will take you to the Wikipedia article about her.

I must admit that I haven't read Chocolat or seen the film. I did, however, read her more recent novel Gentlemen and Players on holiday a couple of years ago. I enjoyed reading it, although I guessed the "surprise twist" about a quarter of the way through! If you haven't read it, though, I do recommend it as an enjoyable thriller with some memorable characters and a good evocation of life at a minor English public school. I've put a link to the relevant page at Amazon.co.uk below...


Anyway, if you have any questions you would like Karl to put to Joanne Harris, do drop him a line. Write to him at karl AT karlmoore.com (changing the AT for the usual @ sign). Put his name ("Karl Moore") in the subject line, to avoid your email being blocked by his spam filters.

If you want to listen to the interview, it will be online at WritersFM on Friday 21 March, or very soon afterwards. And if you'd like more info about WritersFM, please see my recent blog post about the radio station.

Happy listening!

UPDATE! - I've just heard from Karl that unfortunately he has the flu, so his interview with Joanne has had to be put back to next Friday (28 March). So you still have time to send him any questions you would like asked! I'll let you know on this blog when the interview is available on WritersFM.