Jo Walton  Jo Walton (born December 1, 1964) is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel "Tooth and Claw" in 2004. Her novel "Ha'penny" was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award. Her novel "Lifelode" won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award. Her novel "Among Others" won the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel; "Among Others" is one of only seven novels to have been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and World Fantasy Award. Walton was born in Aberdare, in the Cynon Valley of Wales. She went to Park School in Aberdare, then Aberdare Girls' Grammar School. She lived for a year in Cardiff and went to Howell's School Llandaff, then finished her education at Oswestry School in Shropshire and at the University of Lancaster. She lived in London for two years, then lived in Lancaster until 1997. After that, she moved to Swansea, where she lived until moving to Canada in 2002. Walton speaks Welsh, saying, "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." 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 of role-playing game publications, such as "Pyramid", mostly in collaboration with her husband at the time, Ken Walton, co-founder of the Cakebread & Walton games company. Walton was also active in online science fiction fandom, especially in the Usenet 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. Her first three novels, "The King's Peace" (2000), "The King's Name" (2001), and "The Prize in the Game" (2002) were all fantasy and set in the same world, which is based on Arthurian Britain and the Táin Bó Cúailnge's Ireland.