Co-hosted by African Speculative Fiction Society
Abstract
Through invented worlds and technologies, Black speculative fiction offers stories of diversity and hope, possibility and probability, and can entrench warnings in cautionary tales that serve as a deterrent from escapable future tragedies in our world. The writer as an agent of change may adopt creative writing as an art that leverages from the sciences in a different kind of writing to cultivate inclusive worlds and characters, and offer a response in fiction to realistic problems such as climate change, gender and racial disparity, and other crises.
Join African-Australian speculative fiction author Eugen Bacon to explore science as a caution and a hope. This stimulating discussion on the power of storytelling will showcase collaborations with others, and leverage from the self as data, to consider how art and science can be a true ‘Marriage of Figaro’. In the seminar, Eugen will explore, with presentation and readings, how we can leverage science and technology in our stories to explore our place in the universe, ask fundamental philosophical questions, interrogate the past and learn from it, reflecting or foreshadowing a future with paradigm-shifting technologies.happier future.
Biography
Tanzanian-born author Eugen Bacon is a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick Award and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Her collection 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 a 2024 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.