Lauren Beukes is the award-winning author of The Shining Girls (now an AppleTV show with Elisabeth Moss), Broken Monsters, Zoo City and the forthcoming multiverse thriller, Bridge. She also writes comics and screenplays, co-created South Africa's first half hour animated TV show, Pax Afrika, directed an award-winning documentary about Miss Gay Western Cape and, in the course of her work as a journalist, has interviewed sex workers, vigilantes, high court judges and epidemiologists. She lives in London, England, with her teenager.