Sleepers in the Snow: An evening with Joanne Harris

Joanne Harris is at The Forum on Wednesday 28 October as part of the Norwich Book Festival. It's an evening centred on her novel Sleepers in the Snow, a story of love, loss, mystery and dementia.

Sleepers in the Snow is a ghost story Harris wrote during the winter of 2024/5, and it's set on the North York Moors. It follows an unnamed man who buys an isolated house, Kirkhill, only to find it still fully furnished by the previous owners, Arthur and Caroline Sanderson, who died together on the moor after a heavy fall of snow. The novel draws on the 14th-century funeral chant the Lyke Wake Dirge and the real Lyke Wake Walk that passes through the moors, and Harris cites L.P. Hartley's short story 'The Pylon' as a literary influence.

She wrote the book over about three months following her father's death and describes it as a 'winter book' rather than a summer one like Viann—an exploration of place, age, solitude and memory. Ramsey Campbell and Jake Arnott have praised it as a modern folk-horror and a contemporary classic of the supernatural. The evening will be built around the novel, so it's a good chance to hear Harris talk through the story and the ideas behind it.

It's all at The Forum on Wednesday 28 October, part of the Norwich Book Festival.