Jo Walton

4 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-26

Jo Walton was born in 1964 in Aberdare, Wales, and moved to Montreal, Canada in 2002; she is married to Emmet A. O'Brien and has one child. She attended Park School and Aberdare Girls' Grammar School, followed by Howell's School in Llandaff and Oswestry School in Shropshire, before completing her education at Lancaster University. Walton began writing at age thirteen but did not publish her first novel until 2000. Before that, she contributed to role-playing game publications and was active in online science fiction communities. In 2008 she began writing a column for Tor.com reviewing books and analyzing Hugo Award nominees. Her novels include Among Others (2012), winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards; Tooth and Claw (2003), winner of the World Fantasy Award; the Small Change trilogy (Farthing, Ha'penny, Half a Crown); the Thessaly trilogy (2015–2016); My Real Children (2014); Lent (2019); and Or What You Will (2020). Walton has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Prometheus, Tiptree, and Locus Awards. In 2019 she coined the term "Tiffany Problem," describing the challenge of making historically accurate details feel plausible in historical fiction.

Universe(s)

Books

• Tooth and Claw (2003) · Tooth and Claw Core Canon
• Among Others (2011) · Among Others Core Canon
• The Just City (2015) · Thessaly Core Canon
• The Philosopher Kings (2015) · Thessaly Core Canon
• Necessity (2016) · Thessaly Core Canon
• Or What You Will (2020) · Or What You Will Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 6 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 8 (5 won, 1 finalist mention, 2 nomination)

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