Internationally recognised author Lauren Beukes is doing something she usually tries hard not to - repeat a successful formula.
To raise money for a charity that supplies books to children who do not have them, Beukes and art curator Jacki Lang have revived a project that raised R95000 for non-governmental organisation Rape Crisis in 2013.
This time, Beukes has chosen Book Dash, an NGO that creates open-licensed story books for disadvantaged children.
A recent Cape Town event raised just more than R200000. The Johannesburg event takes place today.
Artists created works on pages torn from Beukes's latest novel, Broken Monsters, which were sold at R1500 each.
"I've done a charity art project with all of my books," says Beukes, who is known for tackling new topics for each of her novels.
It was only with her third novel, The Shining Girls, that she came up with art on a page ripped from her book. That, she says, was Lang's idea.
"It was a very collaborative brainstorm," says Lang, who was the brain behind the UK's Napkin Project, a 2008 event during which artists work on a napkin was sold to raise funds for SA's Peninsula School Feeding Association.
Beukes says she first decided to use "whatever celebrity I have for good" when her first novel, Moxyland, became popular. She raised R15000 selling soft-toy monsters and gave the money to a women's empowerment organisation.
