Tanzanian-Australian author Eugen Bacon is set to publish a nonfiction anthology focused on African speculative fiction. The anthology is titled Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction and will be published by Bloomsbury Academic.

The anthology will consist of original essays infused with excerpts from African writers on the futurisms in their speculative fiction. According to Publisher’s Marketplace, Bacon’s anthology 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.”

Featuring an introduction by Nigerian fantasy writer Suyi Okungbowa, the anthology is bound to be a groundbreaking addition to the wave of essays and nonfiction coming out recently reflecting on African speculative fiction, its history and future, and its terms and limits. Just last year, Nigerian author Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki released a collection of essays and stories with co-author Joshua Uchenna Omenga to coin the term “Afropantheology” in African speculative fiction.

Eugen Bacon is an African-Australian author of several novels and fiction collections. She’s a British Fantasy Award winner, a Foreword Book of the Year silver award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the British Science Fiction Association, Aurealis, Ditmar and Australian Shadow Awards. Bacon was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction”. She has published Serengotti, Languages of Water, Mage of Fools, Chasing Whispers, and An Earnest Blackness, among others.

Congrats to Bacon on the upcoming nonfiction anthology!