A sloth, a lizard wizard and a terrible date walk into a podcast: Lauren Beukes draws the cards

Lauren Beukes is a South African author known for her genre-bending fiction that blends speculative elements with sharp social commentary. Born in Johannesburg in 1976, she gained international acclaim with her 2013 novel The Shining Girls, a time-travel thriller about a serial killer and the woman who survives him. Beukes’s work often explores themes of identity, violence, and transformation, with a strong focus on women’s stories. Her other novels include Moxyland, Zoo City (which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award) and Afterland, a post-pandemic thriller. Lauren's latest book, the multiverse-lost-mother-thriller, BRIDGE is out now!

Photo by Henry Söderlund, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

NEXT EPISODE: Amy Blackthorn, the master herbalist and award-winning author of the best-selling Blackthorn's Botanicals series.

Tarot Interviews credits

• Host and producer: Finbarre Snarey
• Theme music composer: Amelia Lawn
• Additional music: Nicola Snarey
• Cover art: Rein G

If you're curious about the cards we use and want to find out more, or if you would like to be a guest on the show, visit our Tarot Interviews podcast page.

Chapters

• 2:26 Five of Wands
• 8:27 King of Pentacles
• 14:20 The High Priestess

Transcript

Fin (00:00)
Welcome to Tarot Interviews. Lauren Beukes is a South African novelist, journalist and television writer. She's known for novels such as The Shining Girls, Zoo City and Broken Monsters. Her work has received multiple accolades, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award. And in addition to fiction, Beukes has worked in journalism, documentary filmmaking and wrote her first novel, Age 17. So if my maths is right, you would have been penning that to the sounds of Four Non Blondes, What's Going On?

Which feels like the day we're collectively having. Out of interest, what soundtrack was that penned to?

Lauren Beukes (00:31)
I knew it right?

It was actually the last of the Mohicans soundtrack because it was, I think it's, is it Vangelis or Jan Tiersen? It's just like very beautiful and like kind of interesting and it's propulsive. Normally I write to things like Amon Tobin or yeah, like, kind of very interesting electronica that's, that kind of carries you forward. That is a bit surprising. I can't listen to anything with lyrics, but last of the Mohicans was my first novel, which is In A Drawer.

I did move continents with it, but it's going to stay in a drawer. It's going to, I should definitely burn it at some point.

Fin (01:08)
To see that poster. You know, around about the time in the early 90s when you'd have these giant film posters in people's rooms. I remember seeing the Last of the Mohicans dotted around everywhere. It was very impressive but I've never seen it. Is it worth a watch?

Lauren Beukes (01:21)
Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I really can't remember that far back, but I really enjoyed it at the time. I can certainly recommend other amazing 90s films, but yeah.

Fin (01:33)
Okay, well maybe one for another podcast. and that was a free question that technically the cards need to ask the questions. So without further ado, we'll take a look at the cryptic triptych of tarot. And your first card is I'm going to be shuffling these. want you to tell me when to stop anytime you like.

Lauren Beukes (01:35)
No.

sorry. Yes.

That looks like the Five of Wands,

Fin (02:02)
Alright so the Five of Wands. Immediately what feelings do you get from that just out of interest?

Lauren Beukes (02:09)
So this particular card from your deck looks like it is... there's a bit of friction happening there. They're trying to build something but everything's kind of getting tangled together. But the ones are sprouting, there's this kind of fresh growth and seedlings coming from there so that seems to inspire building something interesting and new and fresh. But these guys have got to get their act together and just kind of really stop getting tangled, stop like fighting each other over this.

Fin (02:33)
Absolutely. The Five of Wands is normally a card of, I think it's conflict and competition. Yes, Challenges arriving in group settings, that kind of thing. Energy in chaos, overcoming obstacles. Okay, so what I'm going to do is think of a question to ask based on this card.

Out of interest, do you have a favorite tarot card?

Lauren Beukes (03:06)
The Queen of Wands. Yeah, and I actually have a tattoo inspired by the deck that I have, which is by an amazing American artist called Stasia Burrington. And on her Queen of Wands, she's got, she did a little kind of tattoo on her arm of a broken infinity symbol, because we do not in fact have infinity. We only have now in this reality. And so it was kind of a reminder to myself to.

Fin (03:08)
the Queen of Wands? Why's that?

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Beukes (03:35)
live in this moment and make that as important and urgent and immediate as opposed to kind of getting tangled in my head and all the ones that I like. I usually pull up a lot of swords. I'm definitely a seven of swords kind of person.

Fin (03:51)
Okay, so my question to you looking at this would be, how do you handle competition or creative conflict in your industry?

Lauren Beukes (03:59)
So I don't really think of publishing as being, I don't think of other writers as being my competitors. I think I'm only really competing against myself. And unfortunately, I am a giant asshole to myself. which I'm sure, you know, no creative people have ever been through that before ever. So I think really the conflict is with my own critic and kind of holding myself up to this absolutely impossible standard. And I think as creatives in whatever industry you're in,

You're holding yourself to the standard of the kind of work that you appreciate. So when I write, I'm like, well, geez, Lauren, it's not exactly Margaret Atwood, is it? But you know what? I'm never going to be Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood probably has days where she feels like she's not Margaret Atwood. And that's OK. It's really kind of like trying to overcome my own sense of pride. I think that conflict and that friction is very important because you're kind of pushing yourself further and you want it to be more.

Then maybe you're capable of, and that's okay, but that can also be paralyzing. If you're sitting there thinking, why can't I get it right? Why can't I become this beautiful, perfect ideal of the words that I had in my head or the story I had in my head? And you just kind of have to keep working through it. I think for me, yeah, so AI I think is kind of the competition right now. And I think tech bros who don't care about creatives and audiences who don't actually mind that much.

Are  of the big problem right now. But from what I was saying earlier and kind of process, writing is process, writing is thinking, and that's something that AI doesn't do. So when I'm coming up against all that friction inside my own head and kind of the words on the page and the struggle and the fight that I'm doing, that is where the real magic happens. is fighting through the thicket of thorns and kind of sprouting greenery.

To be able to find your way through to something more interesting. And I don't think AI is ever gonna be able to do that because it's not capable of process. It's not capable of like human process as well, like bringing in your whole life and like how you live and how you breathe and the people you engage with and the weird conversation you had this morning on the tube or some kind of life experience which feeds into all of who you are, which comes into the page.

Fin (06:16)
So out of all the books or projects that you've worked on, which would you say to you feels the most human? Which encapsulates the human condition most do you think?

Lauren Beukes (06:27)
that's interesting. I mean, Zoo City is my favorite. I think that's the most me. I think because it's... God. Yeah, you know, so The Shining Girls is the only one of my books that I can explain in like one sentence, which The Shining Girls is a time-traveling serial killer and the survivor who turns the hunt around. The rest of my books are dense and complicated and very tricky.

Fin (06:35)
you just guide us through the story of that one?

Mm-hmm.

Lauren Beukes (06:53)
Zoo City is about a young woman in Johannesburg and she has a magical sloth on her back. And this gives her the magical power to be able to find lost things. And she specifically does not do missing persons. She doesn't wanna get involved. She's not interested, but she gets involved in the case of a missing pop star. So it's this kind of phantasmagorical noir set in like a very real...

Johannesburg, which I've heard some people describe as dystopian, but I'm like, no guys, that's, that's just Johannesburg. I don't know what to tell you.

Fin (07:22)
There so many swirling eddies of inspiration there. Did you have several different ideas that kind of coalesced into one story, or was it just a really good party that you went to and that's what you woke up writing afterwards?

Lauren Beukes (07:24)
No, it was, I just had this very kind of strong image of a young woman with a sloth on her back. You know, she goes to her wardrobe and she opens it up and there hanging among her clothes is the sloth and she pulls it on like backpack and it's this burden, but it's also this incredible gift and it's kind of this possibility of redemption. yeah, I don't do drugs.

My brain is just weird. I don't need to go to other places to find weird things. It is already inside my head.

Fin (08:02)
Thank you very much for that. Right, are you ready for your second card?

Lauren Beukes (08:05)
Absolutely.

Fin (08:06)
Can you read that out for me, please? King of Pentacles, right. I just want you to gaze at that and see what inspiration that brings you

Lauren Beukes (08:07)
Yep, King of Pentacles.

Fin (08:14)
My understanding is that the King of Pentacles represents the manifestation of goals, I believe. So you've got the regal figure, sat on a throne,

So my understanding is that when the King of Pentacles appears, it's a call to embrace your own authority and wisdom in material matters. The question I'll come up with is... What's the most satisfying accomplishment of your career so far?

Lauren Beukes (08:44)
I've had some amazing highlights in my career. You know, I've won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I've won the University of Johannesburg Prize. Stephen King has like, bloke my books. V Stephen King. so, you know, like just, and I was in Australia and I was so jet lagged and I was on book tour. My marriage was falling apart and I got this tweet from like Stephen King saying how much he loved the Shining Girls. And I, I actually couldn't compute it. I was just like, okay, that does just doesn't seem real. Somebody's pranking me and it's just like dumb, but that's not actually.

Fin (08:54)
The Stephen King. Wow.

Lauren Beukes (09:14)
You know, like, and of course there's an Apple TV show based on The Shining Girls, which has got an absolutely brilliant cast. There's an amazing writer, Silke Louisa, who did the most incredible job. And it's beautiful prestige TV, which is true to the heart and the guts of the book. But the thing which means the most to me in my career is, so The Shining Girls is in particular, you know, it's a theme across my books, but I'm very interested in violence and what it does to us and how it breaks us. I think especially coming from you know, country where South Africa has the fifth highest rate of gender-based violence in the world. And The Shining Girls partly came out of my rage around the murder of someone I knew. He was killed by her boyfriend, but it was the murder which took three months because he poured boiling water over her and he stabbed her and it took her three months to die of her injuries. And there was no justice and it was awful. So I wrote into that rage and that's kind of, know, in fiction you can get justice.

Fin (10:02)
I'm so sorry to hear that.

Lauren Beukes (10:11)
So that was kind of what inspired the book. But I wrote the violence because I wanted it to be upsetting. I wrote it in such a way where I wanted you to have to put the book down and maybe go fortify yourself with cup of tea or a strong double whiskey and come back. And some people didn't come back, and I understand that, and that's okay. But I was trying to get to the emotional heart of violence. And it was, think...

I had not a lot of other work with doing this at the time or not that I was aware of where it was very much written from the victim's perspective. So you were with her and you were feeling her rage and anger and fear and terror and thinking about all the things that she was going to lose. And it was much more about that than the kind of typical serial killer fiction, which had been kind of quite prevalent in the culture up until that time, where you're kind of sitting on the killer's shoulder and you're kind of getting off on it a little bit and you're kind of stalking with him.

And the girl is just a, you know, she's a pretty corpse. She's a puzzle to be solved. Or it's only interesting because of like how diabolical it was. And we kind of lose sight of who she was. So I really wanted to center the victims. And I've had a handful of occasions where I've had women come up to me, maybe four or five times. think there were two emails and three people in person.

Who've said, and they never tell me what happened. And usually it's kind of, if it's at a reading, it'll be the last person at the reading and she's waiting for everyone else to leave. And she'll come up to me and she'll say, something happened to me. And she'll never tell me where it is and that's fine. I don't need to know. But she said, the way you wrote about it was right. And you got it what it felt, you got what it felt like. That's what it felt like for me. And that was so important to me was to try and get it right and to try and like write into.

The human experience and that's kind of the entire point of what that book was, to look at what violence does and how it breaks us as a society, how it hurts us as people and what it means to the women who survive and for those who don't to their families and the people who've lost them.

Fin (12:16)
That feels incredibly intense, the idea of releasing something like that into the world and have it come back to you almost magnified. When that lady came up to you, how did you feel the next day? Did it stay with you?

Lauren Beukes (12:29)
Yeah, no, it's definitely stayed with me. That stayed with me beyond anything. So it was a woman in New York, was this woman in Cape Town at a bar. There were two emails and then there was at least one other occasion. But it just, and we didn't continue, you know, there was no further conversation about that. I was just like, thank you so much. And they were very appreciative. They were like, thank you for writing about it. The one woman, the email said that she'd thought about fighting and she thought about like what my heroine had been through.

And course I've got no way of verifying that, she said like that kind of, she kind of fought off some attackers, but she was really kind of thinking about the book and she could, you know, she could have been thinking about Katniss from the Hunger Games. the fact is that it was a reminder to me that fiction speaks to us on a very human level. And the book is actually, once the books left my hands, it's actually not really much to do with me anymore. It becomes the readers. So.

When you read a book, are bringing all of who you are to the experience. And that book is living inside you. It kind of takes root inside you and it becomes part of you and your experience. And it's filtered through all of who you are. And at that point, it really doesn't have much to do with me anymore. You know, I created the original artifact, but people will have a relationship with a book and sometimes they'll mistake for a relationship with me. But I'm like, no, I wasn't there. I wasn't in the room. But I think to have people, you know, to try and do something where I wanted to kind of write.

About something which really meant a lot to me, which really made me angry, which I think is a great harm in the world and to have people respond to tell me that I got it right and the way I wrote about it was meaningful and connected with their experiences in a way that was helpful to be reflected, I think was incredibly powerful.

Fin (14:09)
Sounds like an incredibly moving tribute to someone from your life. Thank you so much for answering that one. And that takes us to the third card.

Lauren Beukes (14:18)
Oh, the high priestess. High priest. Is it the priestess? Okay, high priestess, great.

Fin (14:20)
High priestess, there she is. Uh-huh. High priestess,

there we go.

So I want you to, given some of the stories I know that you've written, I think this would be quite an interesting one.

Lauren Beukes (14:40)
So was interesting over, yeah, so she's obviously sitting on her throne and she's got the moon at her feet, much more kind of feminine energy than the high priest or the hierophant. The hierophant was one of the cards I got when I did my New Year's reading. Yeah, it's kind of my... I used an amazing deck that I bought. It's based on the Smith Rider Waite. It's by an incredible artist called Stasia Burrington. But if you buy, please buy from Stacia B on Etsy because people have ripped off her designs.

Fin (14:52)
Really? Which deck was that that you used?

Lauren Beukes (15:10)
So it should cost you at least 25 pounds and it's in the States and she's absolutely brilliant. Her art is amazing.

Fin (15:17)
And what's name of the deck?

Lauren Beukes (15:19)
the Sasuraibito Tarot deck. Do not ask me how to spell that else. I'll email it to you.

Fin (15:25)
I can happily put it in the description. I'll need to look it up,

but okay. All right. So of course, the high priestess is a kind of intuition, mystery, hidden knowledge.

Lauren Beukes (15:38)
bit of dreaminess in the moon.

Fin (15:41)
Mystery secrets. I remember the last time I read the piece of paper that came with this, said, feminine energy. I don't know if you'll agree or not.

Lauren Beukes (15:50)
Yeah, no, think that's fine.

there is something like incredibly powerful in my kind of the feminine. And I...

I love being a woman. I love kind of being, you know, having the kind of female experience until you run into patriarchy and like all that kind of, you know, the horrors of the world and misogyny and the voter rights suppression and lack of abortion and menopause and pay discrepancy and all the rest. But I think it's such an incredible experience to be a woman and to have a daughter as well, I think is like really, really interesting and amazing.

And I think there is, there is maybe more social, more, I guess, more intuition. I don't want to say that women cannot be logical because it's obviously nonsense. In fact, some of my best friends are badass scientists who then also do pole dancing. So for me, I think this is the energy that is a reminder of kind of the softer side of myself and being able to connect with that as well.

I think I tend to be quite very in my head, very driven, very ambitious, overthinking a lot. And I think I need to be able to tap into my intuition more. kind of, think that is also where creativity comes in. And that's where play comes in. I think it is that kind of softer dreaminess. I also think, you know, this idea, again, I'm contradicting myself a little bit, I'm rambling, but I went on a terrible date years and years and years and years ago.

Where the guy was telling me very proudly that he liked to play off his feminine energy. And I was like, oh, really? What is your feminine energy? Tell me more about that. And he didn't see like the kind of danger signs. And he'd already screwed up a couple of times where he'd like, you know, I already had my credit card in hand ready to buy drinks because I got there before him. And he was like, no, no, I should pay because I'm the man. I was like, dude, what? So he was already on thin ice. And then he said this thing about his feminine energy. And I just leaned forward and I was just like very innocent, like, oh.

My goodness, what is that? Tell me about your feminine energy. And he said, you know, well, it's where you're very nurturing and where you're passive. And I was like, that is the very opposite of feminine energy. And I think, you feminine energy is fierce and it's ferocious and it's full of knives and it's because you have to be. And also you survive bleeding.

Which, you or if you're a trans woman, you survive like having like to deal with all the misogyny and the transphobia as well. It's just, you know, like you to be a woman is to struggle constantly with the whole damn world. It is not passive. It is active. It is driven. It is ferocious. It is fiery. But I think for me, the high priestess is about kind of more that kind of an Artemis the hunter, you know, is the ultimate high priestess, you know, and like she's a badass bitch who like goes and hunts, you know, in the wilderness. And so it's that warrior feminine energy as well. But it is kind of the intuition. It is the dreaminess. the I think it's more kind of reminded to get out of my head and that kind of like cold hard intellectualness.

Fin (18:58)
So we'll go into your last question in just a moment, but looking at this card, and I've seen this card so many times, it's been on so many t-shirts, posters, albums galore, but I've never drawn the connection between this card and Kore and Persephone. I'm just looking around the back, you've got these, what appear to be pomegranates.

But your question is what role does intuition or the subconscious play in your creative process?

Lauren Beukes (19:18)
Yeah, that's good.

One of the popular ways of describing writing process is you're either a pantser or a plotter. So plotters like plot everything out meticulously and they have a board. There is a very funny motor board picture of me with my Shining Girls motor board online somewhere. But pantsers kind of fly by the seat of their pants.

but there's also, I've heard it coming more and more into kind of popular usage, headlighters. And I used to talk about this a lot. So there's an EL doctorate quote, which says, the writing is like taking a road trip at night. You know where you're coming from and you know where you're going to, but the rest of the way you can just see like 20 feet ahead of you in the headlights. And that's very much how I write. Like I do, I do know where I'm going and I will map out everything, but I'm mapping things out kind of as I'm going along.

So, but I always, I not always know exactly where I'm going. I know what some of the major waypoints are that I'm going to have to hit along the way. And sometimes I roll the car into the ditch or I take a really interesting detour and then have to like kill 20,000 words because they are not relevant. Or sometimes that detour turns out to be much more interesting. And what I love is the subconscious moment in writing where in between your fingers on the keyboard and the thought firing in your brain, something changes.

And characters will kind of shift in a direction that I hadn't anticipated where the writing, you know, as I'm writing the dialogue, it kind of shifts in a slightly different direction. And it's not that the characters are alive or inhabiting me or speaking to me or not possessed. It's really just that kind of subconscious process. And as I said earlier, like writing is process. You know, it is the act of thinking and writing that kind of shapes you and guides you. And by putting those words down, you're figuring out exactly where to go.

So it's absolutely crucial for me. Sometimes I have to come back and, you know, as I said, like, call the AA, get a tow truck, figure out where the hell I went wrong, get a rental.

Fin (21:27)
You ever been inspired by something from your dreams? Or, I'll reverse it, has anything you've ever written come back into your dreams?

Lauren Beukes (21:36)
No and no. I do have quite an interesting dream scape and I'll revisit like landscapes. I used to dream about sharks a lot, which was always a sign that I was going, that I was facing some kind of like major struggle in my life or kind of waypoint, but also felt like kind of they were, they were kind of a guiding elemental force as well. I've always loved sharks and, yeah, but.

I haven't really had any sharks in my box. I should have more sharks in my box. It's a problem, really. Great whites.

Fin (22:10)
Are we talking hammerheads, great whites?

Those tiny little ones that bite a circular chunk out of you, which are the most evil looking things I once saw a picture of one of those bites and I wish I never had. That's the one.

Lauren Beukes (22:16)
The cookie cutter sharks. Now my favorite is ghost shark, which I think has just been rediscovered. They found one alive. And it's just very strange and beautiful and weird. And I love that sharks are like ancient. My favorite great white is deep blue, who is enormous. And the last video I saw of her, she was pregnant with some freaking diver trying to like touch her pregnant belly. I was like, leave the shark alone.

Fin (22:57)
Sorry, that made me lose my words.
And it would be an absolute terrible shame if I didn't ask you one last thing about... I noticed that you were working on something called Geckomancer.

Lauren Beukes (23:06)
No, it's actually out. It's called the Gekomancer's Lament.

Fin (23:14)
Oh, I can start to lament because my daughter heard me talking about it and she asked me if that person would be a lizard wizard.

Lauren Beukes (23:23)
It is indeed a lizard wizard. It's quite a funny story, but it's also quite a sad story. It's part of Uncanny Magazine and my friend Luyanda Unati Lewis Nyawo. They're South African, non-binary.

Fin (23:25)
Excellent.

Lauren Beukes (23:38)
They're actually the sheriff in Wednesday, the TV show, they together with their partner, Em, who is a sound designer, we recorded the audio book version together. I mean, it's audio books, like half an hour long story. And the performance that they gave was just absolutely phenomenal. They're very funny and charming and then just gut wrenching because there's a very sad love story at the heart of this and it's about betrayal and it's about

gaslighting, and it's also kind of this neo, well, it's an anti-colonial revenge story where this gecko manza teams up with some other creatures in this fantasy universe to go and defeat an evil conquistador. It's definitely one of the silliest stories I've ever written, but I think rereading it, I'm like, my God, I was writing so much into this moment now. And I've kind of this feeling of like being Cassandra of seeing the horror that's happening around the world and no one's listening to you.

And that kind of sense of betrayal and how you live with that is also quite a strong theme in it. So very silly, but I hope also quite poignant. And of course it has a gecko necromancer, so how can you resist?

Fin (25:11)
That's it for this episode of Tarot Interviews. Huge thanks to Lauren Beukes for sharing her insights and stories with us. Don't miss our next episode where we'll uncover more creative connections through the cards. Subscribe now and I'll see you soon.