Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon is an African-Australian computer scientist and author of speculative fiction.

She has won or been nominated for national and international awards, including the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, Otherwise Fellowship, Shirley Jackson Award, Philip K Dick Award, Locus Awards, Ignyte Awards, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award, Bridport Prize, Aurealis Awards, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. She also writes nonfiction. She is a professional editor registered with the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd), and has been a judge in various competitions including the Aurealis Awards, Western Australian Premier's Literary Awards, Norma K Hemming Awards and Australian Shadows Awards.

Early life

Eugen Bacon was born Eugen Matoyo in Tanzania, As a toddler she moved with her family to Kenya, remaining in boarding school there after their return to Tanzania.

She later lived in the UK before moving to Melbourne, Australia. She speaks English and Swahili.

Education

Eugen Bacon studied Information Technology at Strathmore University in Kenya. She has a Master of Science with distinction in distributed computer systems from the University of Greenwich, UK. She also holds a Master of Arts in creative writing and a doctorate in writing, both from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. She worked in ICT in a service provider role before becoming a writer.

Writing

She has published short fiction and novels in various genres within the literary speculative fiction field, including black speculative fiction and afrofuturism. She also writes nonfiction including essays, scholarly articles, book chapters and books.

Bibliography

Novels

• Mage of Fools (2022)

Novellas

• The Nga'phandileh Whisperer. Stars and Sabers Publishing. 2025
• Novic. Meerkat Press. 2025
• Broken Paradise. Luna Press Publishing. 2023
• Ivory's Story. NewCon Press. 2021

Short fiction

Collections

• Hadithi & the State of Black Speculative Fiction (2020, with Milton Davis)
• Black Moon: Graphic Speculative Flash Fiction 2020)
• Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories (2020)
• Danged Black Things (2021)
• Saving Shadows (2021)
• Chasing Whispers (2022)
• A Place Between Waking and Forgetting (2024)

Stories

Anthologies (edited)

• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2024). Fission #4: Stories from the British Science Fiction Association. BSFA, finalist Aurealis Awards
• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2025). Fission #5: Stories from the British Science Fiction Association. BSFA
• Bacon, Eugen (2024). Afro-Centred Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction. Bloomsbury Academic, winner of the 2025 Ignyte Award for Outstanding Creative Non-Fiction.

Poetry

• Texture of Silence: An Illustrated Collection of Prose Poetry (2023), with Steve Simpson^{https://www.independentlegions.com/store/p584/texture.html}
• Saving Shadows (2021)^{http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=193&referer=Catalogue}
• Speculate: A Collection of Microlit (2021), with Dominique Hecq^{https://meerkatpress.com/books/speculate/}
• Frame of Reference (2021)
• Black Moon (2020)^{https://ifwgaustralia.com/title-black-moon-graphic-speculative-flash-fiction/}
• Her Bitch Dress (2020)
• It's Folking Political (2020)

Non-fiction

Books

• Afro-Centred Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction (ed)
• An Earnest Blackness (2022)
• Writing Speculative Fiction (2019)

Collections

• Encounters with James Baldwin: Celebrating 100 years (2024)

Articles

• Crafting Stories within a Story 2013
• Peaches and Lemons – Peter Temple and Michael Ondaatje 2016
• The Writer 2013
• Hang Him When He's Not There 2016
• Chewing Over the Trials of Unemployment 2011
• Crossing genre - exemplars of literary speculative fiction 2017
• What is AfroSF? 2018
• Writing and Reading Speculative Fiction 2019
• The Rise of Black Speculative Fiction 2020
• Dark Fiction 2020
• Southerly review 2014
• Journaling - a path to exegesis in creative research 2014
• Review of Angela Meyer's Captives 2015
• Being Marcus 2015
• Push—a prototype of displaced fiction in the YA literature debate: Breaking the circle of silence 2015
• Creative practice - finding the right mentor 2015
• Creative research: Mixing methods in practice-led research to explore a model of stories-within-a-story to build a novel 2017
• Scholarly exegesis as a memoir 2017
• The creation of a toxic utopia in David Coleman's The Shaming 2019
• I went looking for AfroSF 2020
• Becoming visible: The Rise of Black Speculative Fiction 2020
• Review of NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o's Birth of a Dream Weaver 2020
• The Benefit of Our Humanity 2020
• The Perfect Nine: The Epic of GÄ©kÅ©yÅ© and MÅ©mbi 2020
• Afrofuturism: A WorldCon Recap, and Some Thoughts 2020
• The New Seduction of an Old Literary Crime Classic 2020
• Inhabitation-Genni and I 2020
• World building in NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong'o's The Perfect Nine: The Epic of GÄ©kÅ©yÅ© and MÅ©mbi (Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Luna Press Publishing, 2021)
• Trends in black speculative fiction (Fafnir)
• Agents of Change: Eugen Bacon (Locus Magazine)
• The Westsider: Eugen Bacon on the Power of Storytelling
• HWA: Black Heritage in Horror - Interview with Eugen Bacon
• British Fantasy Society - Meet Eugen Bacon
• British Science Fiction Association - Interview: Eugen Bacon

Critical studies and reviews of Bacon's work

JayLit Interview Series with Eugen Baco)in

Secondhand Daylightn

Exclusive Interview. Eugen Bacon and Andrew Hook. Paulsemel.com

Publishers Weekly (2023). Secondhand Daylight.

Mage of Fools

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Danged Black Thing

Publishers Weekly (2023). Danged Black Thing

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The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories

Claiming T-Mo

Awards and nominations

References