Why am I passionate about this?

I am a multi-award-winning African Australian writer, and have a deep passion for stories by people of colour, stories that engage with difference. I write across genres and forms, and my award-winning works are mostly Afrocentric. I am especially curious about unique voices in black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.


I wrote...

Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction

By Eugen Bacon ,

Book cover of Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction

What is my book about?

This vibrant and approachable book comes with original artistic essays infused with creative excerpts from award-winning African writers on the…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Mothersound

Eugen Bacon Why I love this book

This rare anthology is distinct in its focus on music and sound magic and the languages of Mother Africa, as authors of African descent take their imagination to the furthermost reaches, with short stories and accompanying stimulating illustrations.

Mothersound brings together years of worldbuilding through Afrocentric stories set in the Sauútiverse, with its vision to "create a space for African and African diaspora writers and creators to collaborate and share fantastical ideas."

By Wole Talabi (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mothersound as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology is the first anthology of stories set in a fictional shared world based on a blend of African cultural worldviews. Edited by Locus award nominated editor Wole Talabi with contributions from around the African continent and diaspora, Sauúti is filled with wonder, mystery, and magic.


African-based intergalactic worldbuilding Space travel Humanoid and non-humanoid creatures Artificial intelligence Intricate magic system based on sound, oral traditions, and music

Book cover of Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions

Eugen Bacon Why I love this book

This book is an unusual anthology that speaks loud to the reader, reminding them of their loves and hurts, longings, terrors, and dreams.

It’s a cross-lingual hybrid with a literary bend that integrates poetry and short fiction, and is inclusive in its cast of authors of Black, Black-Latinx, Cherokee, Japanese-American, and contributors of much diversity.

The anthology is both visually aesthetic—in the artistic array of its poetry—and textually arresting with stories of ancestry, superstition, and the deity.

By Khadijah Queen (editor) , Kiini Ibura Salaam (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Infinite Constellations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging

The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.

The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make…


Book cover of Dark Fae Outcast

Dark Fae Outcast by Autumn M. Birt,

Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.

But while scoring his last…

Book cover of African Ghost Short Stories

Eugen Bacon Why I love this book

This book brings together a diverse cast of writers from Africa and the diaspora to explore spirits, ancestors, and folklore in eerie ghost stories from Africa.

It spotlights new, contemporary, and award-winning writers in their study of ancestral fear or veneration, and retellings or new craftings of gothic horror.

By Chinelo Onwualu (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked African Ghost Short Stories as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Following the hugely successful Black Sci-Fi Short Stories and Asian Ghost Short Stories, comes this deluxe edition of new African writing and tales rooted in ancient culture. This collection explores the deep-seated supernatural element in African storytelling - whether reaching back to the spirits, ancestors and ogres of folklore or the vibrantly modern ghosts of today's African horror. New and contemporary stories complement poignant folktales such as 'The Story of Takane' from Lesotho and 'The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull' from Nigeria.

With a foreword by award-winning Nigerian-British writer Nuzo Onoh, an introduction by Prof. Divine Che Neba, and…


Book cover of Ex Marginalia

Eugen Bacon Why I love this book

This book arrives with a profound introduction on "writing ourselves into being," and casts a crucial gaze on writing from the margins.

It invites the reader to engage with difference, whether the difference is queer or skin colour or cultural heritage or whichever form of diversity. Contributors share with the reader their art, craft, and lived experience, where "writing oneself in," as Octavia Butler did, is fundamental self-creation, snatching space that has been stolen or withheld.

This anthology of personal truths, as authors unskin to their innermost selves, is as startling as it is introspective.

By Chinelo Onwualu (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ex Marginalia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Ex Marginalia, 20 authors of speculative fiction explore what it means to create at the intersections of their multiple marginalities. A gay man pens a letter to his departed muse, an African woman ruminates on the end of a marriage, a Filipino writer defends romantic villains.

These essays chart identities and perspectives systematically excluded by a field that has failed to deliver on its promise of progress. But these voices cannot—will not—remain in the margins any longer.


Book cover of Shadows of the Past

Shadows of the Past by Eric Goebelbecker,

The Martians failed in 1894. In 1915, humanity won't be so lucky.

It’s 1915, and the trenches of the Somme are already hell for German soldier Emil Zimmerman. But when the familiar, terrifying howl of a Martian Wanderer sounds across the battlefield, he knows the true war has just begun.…

Book cover of Sinophagia

Eugen Bacon Why I love this book

This is an exquisitely-arrayed anthology of translated contemporary Chinese horror and has a hearty share of corpses, self-harm, graphic violence, torture, and all manner of physical and psychological abuse.

It’s a culturally immersive miscellany that draws attention to marginalised humans and non-humans in subversive activism that breaks a circle of silence through clever use of mythology, folklore, and superstition.

By Xueting C. Ni (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sinophagia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An anthology of unsettling tales from contemporary China, translated into English for the very first time.

Fourteen dazzling horror stories delve deep into the psyche of modern China in this new anthology curated by acclaimed writer and essayist Xueting C. Ni, editor and translator of the British Fantasy Award-winning Sinopticon.

From the menacing vision of a red umbrella, to the ominous atmosphere of the Laughing Mountain; from the waking dream of virtual working to the sinister games of the locked room... this is a fascinating insight into the spine-chilling voices working within China today - a long way from the…


Explore my book 😀

Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction

By Eugen Bacon ,

Book cover of Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction

What is my book about?

This vibrant and approachable book comes with original artistic essays infused with creative excerpts from award-winning African writers on the futurisms in their speculative fiction. 

Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction is a new kind of African study in an evaluative gaze at African history, African spirituality, Afrosurrealism, ‘becoming,’ black radical imagination, cultural identity, decolonizing queerness, myths, linguistic cosmologies, and more. This groundbreaking contribution to knowledge negotiates genre-bending and black speculative fiction with writerly practice. It enwraps intrinsic voices from Afrodescendant peoples with lived experience from the continent in critical conversations on Afrofuturism and Afro-centered futurisms.

Book cover of Mothersound
Book cover of Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions
Book cover of African Ghost Short Stories

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Once, Steve was a hero. Now he’s running from the law. And he’s just become a killer, stumbling upon a woman being assaulted by the…

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