Author Spotlight

Jennifer Harris

"Brilliant! Now I can write that novel." This is what I thought as my surgeon explained that I would be off work for six weeks following surgery. I was a rare exuberant patient. For far too long, university work pressures had prevented me starting the manuscript of Paris Locked. In convalescence, I flung myself into writing. Although I was thousands of miles away, mentally I transported myself to Paris and walked the medieval lanes and magnificent avenues I had loved for a long time. Physical setting is a crucial element of my fiction. I draw on built historic environments both as metaphors and to structure the plot, recognising that cities are giant texts that subtly reveal their stories. I write literary women’s psychological fiction inspired by vestiges of the past we see in contemporary city life.

An epiphany has been the catalyst for each of my novels. For Paris Locked, it was hearing that the beloved wooden pedestrian bridge in Paris—the Pont des Arts—had been damaged by the attachment of too many lovelocks. A million was the estimate. At that moment, I was determined to write a novel that would poetically expand the news report, pushing into other themes of exclusivity and immigration, or locking people in and out, metaphors flowing from lovelocks. I wondered what would happen if a site of romance, such as the famous bridge, turned into a site of injury. Paris Locked is the result.

I am now working on a novel which examines the erasure of groups of people from historical memory. Some groups seem almost to disappear from the dominant stories of a city, and yet remnant collective memories retain the power to erupt and destabilize the status quo. I hope my books encourage readers to look with curiosity at their own cities.

About the Author: Jennifer Harris is the Amazon bestselling author of The Devil Comes to Bonn (2023) which is set in an international academic conference in the ancient city of Bonn, Germany, and gives a new view on the #MeToo movement. Paris Locked (2025) is her second published novel although she started it before her first. She is Australian, moving to the US in 2020 and now living in New York City. She has worked as a journalist in London and Australia and has lectured and researched for many years in the field of Cultural Heritage Theory in which she has a PhD. She draws on her expertise in understanding and exploring the layers and nuances of historic environments. Today she balances—or attempts to balance—dedication to writing with the powerful lure of New York City with its endless stories and fascinating streets.