Sefton Borough of Culture evening with Joanne Harris

In 2021, Sefton Borough of Culture invites you to spend an evening in with some great literature in a new series of online events, starting with Chocolat author Joanne Harris on 18 February.

Joanne Harris will be the first of a series of special guest authors joining The Reader to celebrate Sefton’s year as the Liverpool City Region’s Borough of Culture.

Joanne Harris’s short stories are firm favourites with Liverpool-based organisation The Reader’s shared reading groups. As well as short stories, she has published novels, screenplays, libretti, game scripts, two cookery books and a musical, and she sings with The Storytime Band. Her many works include the novel Chocolat, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Joanne Harris will be the first of a series of special guest authors joining The Reader to celebrate Sefton’s year as the Liverpool City Region’s Borough of Culture. You are invited to spend an evening delving into Orfeia, the latest in a series of short novels which re-imagine folk stories, hearing Joanne read live from the book and talk about the work.

Hosted on Zoom, for the first part of the session you’ll be broken up into small break-out groups to spend an hour taking a close shared reading of an extract from the text, guided by a Reader Leader. Then, following a short break, audience members will come back together and be joined by Joanne Harris for a live reading and the opportunity to take part in a Q&A hosted by Andrew Forster, the Shared Reading projects manager at The Reader.

Upcoming guests in this brand-new series include Kei Miller and Max Porter.