Lauren Liebenberg is a writer, mostly on the subject of breeding in captivity, after an aborted career in investment banking. Her debut novel, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, published in 2008, was – to her lasting surprise – short-listed for the Orange Prize for New Writers, as well as long-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The West Rand Jive Cats’ Boxing Club, was published in 2011, also to international acclaim. She is married with two sons, in whom the feral instinct seems to run strong, and is a survivor of the madness of the Super-Mommy-ism epidemic in the Johannesburg suburban outback she inhabits. They still sometimes invite her to the cocktail parties at Rand Merchant Bank. That’s what she tells people. Cry Baby is Lauren’s third novel.