Walton has been writing since she was 13, but her first novel was not published until 2000. Walton speaks Welsh: '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.' Writing career She then moved to Swansea, where she lived until she moved to Canada in 2002. She lived in London for two years and lived in Lancaster until 1997. She lived for a year in Cardiff, went to Howell's School Llandaff and finished her education at Oswestry School in Shropshire and at the University of Lancaster. She went to Park School in Aberdare, then Aberdare Girls' Grammar School. Walton was born in 1964 in Aberdare, a town in the Cynon Valley of Wales. A collection of her articles were published in What Makes This Book So Great (2014), which won the Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction. Walton is also known for her non-fiction, including book reviews and SF commentary in the magazine Tor.com.

Her fantasy novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, and her alternate history My Real Children received the 2015 Tiptree Award. Other works by Walton include the Small Change series, in which she blends alternate history with the cozy mystery genre, comprising Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown. She is best known for the fantasy novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, a Victorian era novel with dragons which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Jo Walton (born 1964) is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. Fantasy, science fiction, alternate history

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton