Jo has worked in publishing for nine years, having made a radical career change in her mid 40s. Starting at Conville and Walsh, she was proud to be nominated as a Rising Star in 2011, and was shortlisted as Literary Agent of the Year within only three years of coming into the industry. Two years later she was approached by Transworld and appointed as Deputy Publishing Director at Doubleday, but was very quickly able to see that her heart lay in agenting.

Jo returned to being an agent in October 2013.  She set up JULA working initially in association with RCW, and then in September ’16 opened her fully independent agency.  Based at Somerset House she now has over thirty published (or soon-to-be-published) authors. She represents authors of literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction, Young Adult fiction, children’s fiction, comic writing and narrative non-fiction: she doesn’t like to define exactly what she’s looking for, as you just don’t know what’s round the corner. In the last year alone she has had two authors longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, two longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Award, one shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, one for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, one for the Costa First Novel, a winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award as well as several Sunday Times bestsellers. 

Words Away Salon: How Writers and Agents Work Together

Links: JULA LTD

Twitter: @jounwin