Lauren Beukes

Lauren Beukes is an author, TV scriptwriter and freelance journalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the author of the muti noir, Zoo City and Moxyland, a dystopian allegory of a future South African consumertopia and the rollicking non-fiction, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa's Past. Beukes has been described as a "method writer" for the way she uses investigative journalism techniques to research her novels, reading up on her subject matter, but also interviewing relevant sources and spending time on the ground in her locations, from inner city tenement slums to glitzy clubs. She's published short stories in various anthologies, literary journals and magazines including in German and Italian translation, most recently in the Further Conflicts anthology edited by Ian Whates, Fantasy Magazine and Dark Fiction Magazine. As a journalist, she's written for major international titles such as Nature Medicine, The Hollywood Reporter and Colors and won awards for her column With Teeth in The Big Issue magazine and contributed to scathing satire news site, Hayibo.com. As head scriptwriter at TV production company Clockwork Zoo, she co-wrote the pilot for the controversial political satire puppet TV show, Z-News and wrote scripts for the Disney show Florrie's Dragons. In 2006, as head writer, she helped launch South Africa's first full length animated TV series, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, which ran for 104 episodes three years on SABC3. She's just wrapped up directing her first documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands on South Africa's biggest women impersonator pageant and is about to make her comics debut with All The Pretty Ponies, a short story for Vertigo's Strange Adventures anthology. Photo by Nico Krijno. Bio courtesy of the author. Visit http://laurenbeukes.book.co.za/blog/ to learn more.