Jo Mabey was born in a small town in West Yorkshire. Due to her belief
that the grass is always greener, she left Yorkshire as a teenager and
spent many years moving around, working different jobs and studying at
five universities. She did not manage to gain five degrees, but
somewhere along the way she developed a passion for writing.
Jo writes for both adults and children. Her work has appeared in journals
and anthologies, and in 2023 she won first prize in Scotland’s Indie Book
Festival short story competition. Her middle grade novel, Polly’s World,
was shortlisted in the Northern Writers Hachette Children’s Novel Award
in 2021 and is due to be published later this year as Polly Everett’s Other
Worlds.
By an unfortunate twist of fate, Jo ended up back in that same small
West Yorkshire town from which she tried so desperately to escape. She
currently lives there with her daughter and spends most of her time
overthinking, procrastinating, and not writing.