Lauren Beukes is a recovering journalist who is now ridiculously privileged to work on cartoon TV shows for a living, as head writer at Clockwork Zoo Animation. She helped create URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, the hit SABC sci-fi kids' series that the Mail & Guardian described as 'delightfully subversive'. Her first book, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa's Past, a rollicking collection of biographies of real-life renegades and raconteurs, was nominated for the Sunday Times Alan Paton non-fiction award. Her short stories have been published in various anthologies, including Open, FAB, African Road: New Writing from Southern Africa, 180 Degrees and Urban 03. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT, but she got her real education from ten 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 lifeskills 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.