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 muti noir, Zoo City released in 2010 and the dystopian thriller Moxyland (2008) which William Gibson describes as “very, *very* good.”
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 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 the fiction editor of Chew the Magazine, a design, art, photography, pop culture digital magazine.
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 moxy (at) moxyland (dot com)
Author Interviews:
Sunday Times profile: Voodoo Child by Nechama Brodie
Ideas for Novels Develop Like A Polaroid – Mail & Guardian
Litnet: Bright Lights Bleak City
The Times: Up Close & Personal with Margie Orford
