Hi, I’m Justin Lai

I’m an SF native, graduate student, and part-time professional tarot card reader. Follow me @torwards on Instagram or email me at justincameronlai@gmail.com if you’d like to chat!

What I’m up to:

• I’m a part-time professional tarot card reader — I do one-on-ones, group readings, consultations, and parties & events. Visit Mission Tarot for more information, or schedule an online reading through the Moonlight platform.
• Since 2020, I’ve facilitated a monthly book club with my friends, generally focusing on autofiction and and POC literature. We’re not looking for new members, but feel free to check out our planning documents.

My old lives:

• I spent 2020-2024 as a full-time tarot reader — you may have seen me giving readings at Dolores Park or at The Speakeasy interactive theater.
• I occasionally freelance for the KneeDeep Times, a local climate resilience journal — check out my recent pieces here. In 2021, my essay about Lowell High School and racial diversity was published in the SF Chronicle.
• I worked as a writer in the tech industry from 2017 to 2020. I was at Tribe Dynamics (a small influencer marketing startup), then at Turo (the AirBnB for cars). I wrote marketing copy — ads, billboards, emails, landing pages — as well as UX copy.
• I graduated from UC Berkeley with a double major in Psychology and English in 2016. While there, I wrote 50 pages of a psychedelic sci-fi novel, completed a thesis comparing the sex scenes in Double Indemnity (1944) and Body Heat (1981), and volunteered as a peer counselor for the greater Berkeley community.