HARI CONNER is an award-winning author, illustrator, and hopeless forest romantic based in Scotland. Their latest novel, I Shall Never Fall In Love, is a joyfully queer and stunningly romantic graphic novel inspired by the work of Jane Austen.
We asked Hari what their desert island reads are and what inspired their graphic novel.
What are you reading now?
I’m finishing Legends and Lattes and Six of Crows, which I probably should have read ages ago, and just started He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan, and Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi, about a nightmare god stealing back an artefact from the British Museum.
If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have five books – what would they be?
The smart move is probably picking things with long page counts (Middlemarch? David Copperfield? Massive ‘Sherlock Holmes’ collection?) but I’d probably pick favourites:
Persuasion, Maurice, The Parable of the Sower, A Wizard of Earthsea, and the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier, which I think I could keep happily looking at for a long time.
Where is your favourite place to read?
Out in the garden on the rare sunny days in Scotland, on the sofa with tea and the window open when it’s raining.
Do you read one book at a time or multiple?
Always about five at once.
Do you use a bookmark or fold the corners of pages?
I’m a reformed page-folder, I now use bookmarks.
What inspired I Shall Never Fall in Love?
The page from Emma where it really sounds like she fancies Harriet Smith; biographies of Anne Lister and trans history podcasts; living in a tiny English village for a few years; and a whole childhood of getting emotionally involved in BBC period dramas. I loved the idea of a historical romcom with a queer romantic hero – almost ‘what if Mr Darcy was trans’ energy – that felt like a classic romance.
What can you tell us about your characters George and Eleanor?
George is hopelessly in love with their best friend Eleanor, repressed, serious and deadpan – doing all the gentlemanly manners right, but in a world that doesn’t recognise them as masculine.
Eleanor is boisterous and unladylike, earnest but slightly terrible, totally oblivious about why she can’t imagine having a husband but gets extremely attached to some of her friends.
Do you have any writing habits or rituals?
Not intentionally – I mostly get consumed with ideas and write long notes on my phone at 2am, which eventually reach critical mass and turn into a story or comic script.
What book character would you be, and why?
My disability means I can’t do a lot of ordinary things, so I’d love to be in a low-stakes cosy fantasy where I was more able to cook, go on walks, and perhaps get into magical hijinks.
If you could meet one author (living or dead) – who would it be and why?
I’m very lucky to have met lots of my favourite graphic novelists at conventions – if I got a magic wish, I’d cheat and use it to see one of my author friends from overseas who I rarely get to see in person.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hari Conner is an award-winning author, illustrator, and hopeless forest romantic based in Scotland. They’re the creator of the now-complete webcomic Finding Home and choose-your-own-path books including Into the Tower. Hari draws a lot of nature, drama, and queer longing and loves making the kind of books they wish they’d been able to read growing up.
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