About Lauren Beukes
Lauren Beukes is a recovering journalist, TV scriptwriter, award-winning columnist and writer (aka glorified typist).
She’s the author of the phantasmagorical noir, Zoo City which won the Arthur C Clarke Award 2011 and the Kitschies Red Tentacle 2010 as well as the dystopian corporate apartheid thriller Moxyland (2008) which William Gibson describes as “very, *very* good.”
Her new novel, The Shining Girls , about a time-travelling serial killer, is due out in May/June 2013 internatonally.
Her previous book, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past, a rollicking collection of biographies of real-life renegades and raconteurs, was nominated for the 2006 Alan Paton non-fiction award.
Her short stories have been published in various anthologies, including Further Conflicts , Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse, Home Away: 24 Hours. 24 Writers. 24 Places, Touch: Stories of Contact, Open, FAB, African Road: New Writing from Southern Africa, 180 Degrees, Urban 03 and Novel Idea
She’s currently writing an arc of Fairest, an off-shoot of Bill Willingham’s Fables for Vertigo comics and working on the screenplay adaptation for Zoo City, optioned by producer Helena Spring.
She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT, but she got her real education from 12 years of freelance journalism. Writing for the likes of the Sunday Times, Colors, The Hollywood Reporter, Nature Medicine, Marie Claire, and The Big Issue, among others, she picked up really useful life-skills like sky-diving, pole-dancing and brewing mqombothi. Journalism also allowed her to hang out with AIDS activists, township vigilantes, electricity thieves, homeless sex workers, teen vampires, reluctant basejumpers and other interesting folk.
She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter.
Email her at lauren (at) laurenbeukes (dot com)
Author Interviews:
Sunday Times profile: Voodoo Child by Nechama Brodie
Ideas for Novels Develop Like A Polaroid – Mail & Guardian
Studio 360 Interview on NPR with Kurt Anderson
Talking about Zoo City on John Scalzi’s Whatever Blog: The Big Idea
Creating Science Fiction on Scott Hanselman’s Hanselminutes.
89 Chapters with Mahvesh Murad of Pakistan’s CityFM89
Litnet: Bright Lights Bleak City
The Times: Up Close & Personal with Margie Orford
