Dr Eugen Bacon will deliver a keynote at the 2025 IPEd Conference. Her pioneering work has inspired a new wave of editors to think inclusively and creatively. We caught up with Eugen to discuss her work, the conference theme of “Editors as changemakers”, and what we can expect from her keynote.
Born in Tanzania and based in Melbourne, Eugen is an African Australian award-winning author and academic. She’s a British Fantasy Award and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson Awards, Philip K. Dick Award, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (for her novel Serengotti), and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow and has been honoured for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction”. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work”. She’s an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Tasmania and the 2024 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence.
You’re a multi-award-winning writer. Tell us about your practice and the themes you explore.
I started with a passion for literary fiction. The creative space where I tell stories quickly transversed into literary speculative fiction. Here, I can explore themes about motherhood, climate action, social justice, stories of culture, tradition, our past, our future, Black people stories, and everything I am passionate about in cautionary tales or narratives of hope.
My first love is the short story, and my approach to writing novels and novellas is by using my strengths as an author of short stories – layering, embedding literary fragments that are intense and experimental, finding synergies and cleverly integrating them into a sum of the whole. My approach to fiction (and nonfiction) is playful, adventurous. It’s like going out on a first date with my text each time I approach it. I love bending genres. I’m always curious about stories that choose to unfold in fresh, untraditional ways.
How does your writing inform your editorial work?
I am an immersive writer and reader. My curiosity with text and storytelling affects how I read, and what I see when I adorn my editorial or scholarly hats to scrutinise other people’s work.
An excellent piano cannot transform a middling talent into a grand pianist, but a superior editor can restore a mediocre manuscript into a masterpiece. This should not be at the cost of authorship, of voice – that integral part of a writer’s identity. A writerly style is an author’s verbal identity, their unique way of saying. A good editor will not distort the style or intention of the text, but rather will ride the shape of the work.
A good editor does not insert themselves into the text but rather respects the writer, and works with them to bring the work to the best version of itself. This is my approach as the immersive writer who is also an editor.
The theme for the 2025 IPEd Conference is “Editors as changemakers”. What are your thoughts on this changemaker role and what does it look like in practice?
I am a strong proponent of the writer as an agent of change. This applies to editors too. We are in a position of influence in a challenging world today where the stakes couldn’t be higher. We have a strong responsibility to engage with difference and shape dialogue that has a social impact on our world, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
I am a person from a culturally diverse background and – on the giving and receiving end, as a writer who is also an editor – it’s important for me to be aware of the risk of silencing or removing an author’s cultural or other distinctiveness. It’s crucial that we embrace unique voices and encourage difficult conversations, including pointing out bigotry or hate when we see it. A passive onlooker is an agreeable participant.
What are you looking forward to at the 2025 conference?
It’s such an exciting theme! I can’t wait to hear Emeritus Professor Roland Sussex OAM’s keynote speech, to network with fellow editors and writers, and to participate in other items on the thrilling program. I haven’t been to Adelaide in a bit, so it will be great to rekindle my affection for this gentle city.
Can you give us a sneak peek of what to expect from your keynote?
In writing, we have a saying: show; don’t tell. I hope to show, through immersive excerpts, how we can engage with difference and be changemakers as writers and editors.
Dr Eugen Bacon will deliver a keynote at the 2025 IPEd Conference. Registrations for the conference, to be held in Adelaide from 23 July to 25 July, are now open.
Explore some of Eugen’s latest work
- Serengotti by Transit Lounge Publishing is an African-Australian novel with elements of superstition, African spirituality, ghost stories and magical realism. Migrant Ch’anzu has lost everything, and zie goes to a village in a fictitious place called Serengotti – the name being my own playful derivative of Serengetti National Park in Tanzania. There, Ch’anzu must develop this software that will give meaning to refugees, allow them to recreate their own lived experiences, design their own adventures, shape their own stories – four dimensional. I was thrilled to see it as a finalist in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
- Danged Black Thing by Transit Lounge Publishing is an extraordinary collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, patriarchy and womanhood, from a remarkable and original voice. Traversing the West and Africa, they celebrate my own hybridity with sensuousness and lyricism.
- Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction by Bloomsbury Academic is an edited anthology of creative original essays infused with futuristic story excerpts by award-winning Afrodescendant peoples reflecting on their storytelling, and scrutinising approaches to futurisms.
- A Place Between Waking and Forgetting is an Afro-irreal collection of dark speculative fiction by Raw Dog Screaming Press. It cases black people stories in bold and evocative text – at times deeply flawed but potentially redeemable protagonists in rich hues of blackness and light. Something beautiful, something dark in lyrical language packed with affection, dread, anguish and hope. Featuring the World Fantasy Award finalist story “The Devil Don’t Come With Horns”, and a preface by award-winning writer and poet Linda D. Addison, the first African-American recipient of the world-renowned HWA Bram Stoker Award, and who has received five awards for her collections.
Visit eugenbacon.com for more information.