Fletcher, Jo
AWARDS:
Lifetime Achievement Award, 2021
BIO: Jo Fletcher lives in northeast London, England. She is founder and publisher of Jo Fletcher Books, UK publisher Quercus’ specialist horror, fantasy, and science fiction imprint. She is also a writer, ghost-writer, and occasional poet, following earlier careers as a local, then Fleet Street journalist (once commended by a High Court judge for helping stop a bomber), and a film and book critic. She’s been published widely, both in and out of horror, fantasy & SF, winning awards for her writing and services to the genre, including the World Fantasy, the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth and the International Society of Poets Awards.
Jo’s publishing career began in the late 1970s, when she began co-running the British Fantasy Society, and was a regular contributor to Science Fiction Chronicle, amongst other periodicals. She was one of the founder members of the Horror Writers’ Association, and has been a Trustee, sits on the Board of World Fantasy Convention, and is a member of the World Fantasy Awards Administration. Jo co-chaired several British FantasyCons, as well as the 1988 and 1997 World Fantasy Conventions in London.
Jo’s publishing career started in 1985 when she joined the brand-new indie publisher Headline, introducing horror greats like Charles L. Grant, Chet Williamson and Dan Simmons to the British reading public. A short stint at Mandarin (Hamlyn) – and a chance to republish the entire Dennis Wheatley oeuvre – was followed by several years at the newly revitalised genre list at Pan Macmillan, where her authors included Charles de Lint, Richard Christian Matheson and Graham Joyce, as well as Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror anthology series. After a short stint at Penguin, working on the brief-lived horror imprint Signet, she moved to Gollancz, then an independent publisher, to run the genre list there, and stayed as it became part of the Hachette UK empire under Orion. As well as founding the Fantasy Masterworks list to sit alongside the SF Masterworks, her authors ranged from old masters like H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard to bestselling and award-winning masters like Terry Pratchett, Ursula K. Le Guin, Andrzej Sapkowski and Charlaine Harris, to new discoveries like Joe Hill, Tom Lloyd and Ben Aaronovitch, as well as the award-winning Dark Terrors series.
In 2011 Quercus, then a young independent publisher, lured her away to start Jo Fletcher Books; JFB returned to the Hachette stable in 2014 when Hodder acquired Quercus. JFB continues Jo’s tradition of publishing some of the very best writers in the interconnected fields of horror, fantasy and SF. Current authors range widely across the field, from Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Alison Littlewood and Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, to newcomers like Ry Herman and Breanna Teintze.
In her rare spare time, Jo sings, mostly classical choral music, gardens, watches birds, and cooks.