Jo Walton | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Jo Walton in 2014 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 60–61) Aberdare, Wales, UK |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Genre | Fantasy, science fiction,alternate history |
| Spouse | Emmet A. O'Brien |
| Children | 1 |
Jo Walton (born 1964) is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet.[1] She is best known for the fantasy novelAmong Others, which won theHugo andNebula Awards in 2012, andTooth and Claw, aVictorian-era novel with dragons which won theWorld Fantasy Award in 2004. Other works by Walton include theSmall Change series, in which she blendsalternate history with thecozy mystery genre, comprisingFarthing,Ha'penny andHalf a Crown. Her fantasy novelLifelode won the 2010Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate historyMy Real Children received the 2015Tiptree Award.
Walton is also known for her non-fiction, including book reviews and SF commentary in the magazineTor.com. A collection of her articles were published inWhat Makes This Book So Great (2014), which won theLocus Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Walton was born in 1964 inAberdare, a town in theCynon Valley of Wales.[1][2][3] She went to Park School in Aberdare, then Aberdare Girls' Grammar School. She lived for a year in Cardiff, went toHowell's School, Llandaff and finished her education atOswestry School in Shropshire and at theLancaster University. She lived in London for two years and lived inLancaster until 1997. She then moved toSwansea, where she lived until she moved to Canada in 2002.[4]
Walton speaksWelsh: "It's the second language of my family of origin, my grandmother was a well known Welsh scholar and translator, I studied it in school from five to sixteen, I have a ten-year-old's fluency on grammar and vocab but no problem whatsoever with pronunciation."[5]
Walton has been writing since she was 13, but her first novel was not published until 2000. Before that, she had been published in a number ofrole-playing game publications, such asPyramid, mostly in collaboration with her husband at the time, Ken Walton, co-founder of theCakebread & Walton games company.[6] Walton was also active in onlinescience fiction fandom, especially in theUsenet groups rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. Her poem "The Lurkers Support Me in E-Mail" is widely quoted on it and in other online arguments, often without her name attached.[7]
Walton's first three novels,The King's Peace (2000),The King's Name (2001) andThe Prize in the Game (2002), were all fantasy and set in the same world, which is based onArthurian Britain and theTáin Bó Cúailnge's Ireland. She won theJohn W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002. Her next novel,Tooth and Claw (2003), was intended as a novelAnthony Trollope could have written, but about dragons rather than humans.
Farthing was her first science fiction novel, placing the genre of thecozy mystery firmly inside analternative history in which the United Kingdom made peace withAdolf Hitler before the involvement of the United States inWorld War II. It was nominated for aNebula Award, aQuill Award,[8] theJohn W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel,[9] and theSidewise Award for Alternate History. A sequel,Ha'penny, was published in October 2007, with the final book in the trilogy,Half a Crown, published in September 2008.Ha'penny won the 2008Prometheus Award (jointly withHarry Turtledove's novelThe Gladiator)[10] and has been nominated for theLambda Literary Award.[11]
In April 2007,Howard V. Hendrix stated that professional writers should never release their writings online for free, as this made them equivalent toscabs.[12] Walton responded to this by declaring 23 April asInternational Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, a day in which writers who disagreed with Hendrix could release their stories online en masse. In 2008 Walton celebrated this day by posting several chapters of an unfinished sequel toTooth and Claw,Those Who Favor Fire.
In 2008, Walton began writing an online column forTor.com, mostly retrospective reviews of older books.[13] A collection of these blog posts were published inWhat Makes This Book So Great (2014). She also wrote a series of articles revisiting the Hugo award nominees for each year from 1953 to 2000, which were later collected asAn Informal History of the Hugos (2018).[14]
Her book,Among Others (2012), won several awards, including both theHugo Award for Best Novel andNebula Award for Best Novel.[15][16] Her recent works include the alternate historyMy Real Children (2014), which won theTiptree Award;[17] theThessaly trilogy (2015–16), a science fiction/fantasy series involving theGreek Gods and a re-imagining of Plato'sRepublic;[18] and the historical fantasyLent (2019), set inRenaissance Italy.[19] Her 2020 novelOr What You Will is ametafictional novel about immortality and creativity, featuring an ageing fantasy novelist writing a book set in Renaissance Florence.[20]
In February 2018, Walton was the Literary/Fan Guest of Honor and Keynote Speaker at the 36th annualLife, the Universe, & Everything professional science fiction and fantasy arts symposium.[21]
In November 2022, Walton released her original audio dramaHeart's Home, based on a Welsh folk tale, with Odyssey Theatre as part ofThe Other Path podcast.
Walton moved toMontreal, Quebec, Canada, after her first novel was published. She is married to Emmet A. O'Brien.[22] She has one child.
