Joanne Harris presents #Storytime at Waterside
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Chocolat author Joanne Harris MBE was a popular keynote speaker at the last Northern Lights Writers’ Conference (which returns this year on 21 September – save the date!), with her tales from the Twittersphere and inspirational chat about how best to get up the noses of agents, and she’s back at Sale Waterside with her much-lauded #Storytime show. No stranger to combining words and music – as well as writing 16 or so novels, two collections of short stories, a Dr Who novella, guest episodes for the game Zombies, Run and three cookbooks, her career also includes writing for opera and musical theatre – Joanne reads some of her stories with accompaniment from the Storytime Band (which includes her husband Kevin on drums) plus image projections for a ‘darkly magical’ experience.
Featured in #Storytime are excerpts from Joanne’s upcoming illustrated collection of 100 dark, interconnected tales, Honeycomb, first written live on Twitter and due to be published by Gollancz in the autumn, alongside some longer pieces based on her 2017 novella A Pocketful of Crows and 2018 novella The Blue Salt Road. #Storytime premiered in 2016 as part of the ‘future of opera’ Tête-à-Tête Festival, so it’s one for music and theatre as well as live literature lovers, and ticks the boxes on the folklore, fantasy and fairytale front.
