Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon (née Matoyo) is an African-Australian computer scientist and author of speculative fiction.

For her writing career, Bacon has won the British Fantasy Award, British Science Fiction Award, Ignyte Award, Locus Award, SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. She has been a finalist for other literary awards including the Aurealis Award, Ditmar Award, Nommo Award, Otherwise Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Shirley Jackson Award, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and World Fantasy Award.

Early life and education

Eugen Bacon was born Eugen Matoyo. She was born near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. As a toddler, she moved with her family to Nairobi, Kenya. Her family later returned to Tanzania, while Bacon remained in boarding school there. She later lived in the UK before moving to Melbourne, Australia.

She studied Information Technology at Strathmore University in Kenya. She holds a Master of Science in distributed computer systems from the University of Greenwich. She worked in various IT roles. She later completed a Master of Arts in writing and a PhD in writing. In 2021, she stated that worked as a corporate communications manager in addition to writing and editing.

She speaks English and Swahili.

Writing career

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.

In 2021, Bacon was a writer-in-residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writer's Centre. She was the recipient of a 2024 Otherwise Fellowship.

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

• — (23 July 2019). Claiming T-Mo. Meerkat Press. ISBN 9781946154132.
• — (8 December 2020). Ivory's Story. NewCon Press. ISBN 9781912950768.
• — (15 March 2022). Mage of Fools. Meerkat Press. ISBN 9781946154842.
• — (7 February 2023). Broken Paradise. Luna Press Publishing. ISBN 9781913387327.
• — (1 August 2023). Serengotti. Transit Lounge Publishing. ISBN 9780645565362.
• Bacon, Eugen; Hook, Andrew (27 October 2023). Secondhand Daylight. Cosmic Egg Books. ISBN 9781803413556.
• — (2 September 2025). The Nga'phandileh Whisperer. Stars and Sabers Publishing. ISBN 9798991441940.
• — (16 September 2025). Novic. Meerkat Press. ISBN 9781965740019.

Short fiction

Collections

• Bacon, Eugen; Davies, Milton (6 October 2020). Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction. Luna Press Publishing. ISBN 9781913387334.
• — (1 December 2020). Black Moon: Graphic Speculative Flash Fiction. Illustrated by Elena Betti. IFWG Publishing International. ISBN 9781925956658.
• — (1 December 2020). The Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories. Meerkat Press. ISBN 9781946154316.
• — (14 December 2021). Saving Shadows. Illustrated by Elena Betti. NewCon Press. ISBN 9781914953057.
• — (8 September 2022). Chasing Whispers. Raw Dog Screaming Press. ISBN 9781947879447.
• — (20 June 2023). Danged Black Thing. Apex Book Company. ISBN 9781955765114.
• — (19 September 2024). A Place Between Waking and Forgetting. Raw Dog Screaming Press. ISBN 9781947879782.

Stories

• — (28 February 2021). "Unlimited Data". In Davis, Milton (ed.). Cyberfunk!. Mvmedia. ISBN 9781734627985.
• — (1 October 2020). "A Visit in Whitechapel". In Whates, Ian (ed.). London Centric: Tales of Future London. NewCon Press. ISBN 9781912950720.
• — (May–June 2021). "When the Water Stops". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
• — (10 August 2021). . Fantasy Magazine. Vol. 70.
• — (21 September 2021). "Baba Klep". In Oghenechovwe, Donald Ekpeki (ed.). The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021). Jembefola Press. ISBN 9781647100742.
• — (28 March 2022). "Naked Earth". In Chrulew, Matthew (ed.). Phase Change: Imagining Energy Futures. Twelfth Planet Press. ISBN 9781922101730.
• — (19 July 2022). "The Devil Don't Come With Horns". In Liaguno, Vince A.; Mason, Rena (eds.). Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 9780358658894.
• — (22 April 2023). "Human Beans". In Nováková, Julie; Law, Lucas K.; Forest, Susan (eds.). Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays. Laksa Media Groups Inc. ISBN 9781988140476.

Anthologies (edited)

• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2022). . BSFA and HWS Press.
• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2022). . BSFA and HWS Press.
• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2023). . BSFA and HWS Press.
• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2024). . BSFA
• Bacon, Eugen; Rowe, Gene (2025). . BSFA
• Bacon, Eugen; Oghenechovwe, Donald Ekpeki; Davis, Milton (2023). . Arc Manor.
• Bacon, Eugen (2023). . MVMedia.

Poetry

• — (2020). It's Folking Political. Ginninderra Press.
• — (2020). Her Bitch Dress. Ginninderra Press.
• Bacon, Eugen; Hecq, Dominique (19 January 2021). Speculate: A Collection of Microlit. Meerkat Press. ISBN 9781946154743.
• — (14 December 2023). Texture of Silence: An Illustrated Collection of Prose Poetry. Illustrated by Steve Simpson. Independent Legions Publishing. ISBN 9791280713780.

Non-fiction

Books

• Afro-Centered 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 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Birth of a Dream Weaver 2020
• The Benefit of Our Humanity 2020
• The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi 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 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi (Worlds Apart: Worldbuilding in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Luna Press Publishing, 2021)
• (Fafnir)
• (Locus Magazine)
• The Westsider:
• HWA:
• British Fantasy Society -
• British Science Fiction Association -

Awards and honors