The 40 But 10: Eugen Bacon

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title Another Nemesis, poems by Ai Jiang, Angela Yuirko Smith, Eugen Bacon, and Maxwell I Gold, by participating in their blog tour. 

For our portion of the tour, Eugen has decided to participate in our 40 But 10 series - where I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list 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.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

Describe your book poorly.

It’s not a novel or an anthology and it’s kind of biggish at 100 pages. There’s not one or two or three authors and the cover looks like a rainbow with some devils and angels on it. So the real artist is the publisher. In effect, you can get painted pastures and news from the sea, a bit of Lilith and Circe and a bastardized song. Somewhere inside is an unbuilt thing and a Saraswati. Nah, yeah, Loki and Anansi too. Tell you what, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, something taken, something forsaken. Bloody oath, she knows a bit more. Relax. What else were we to do? Look out for the wall of someday. 

Do you have any hidden talents?

I’m telepathic. My hand itches when I’m about to get money. For real, I feel things deeply. Like, years ago, miles away, I knew when my father was dying. Maybe I need to listen to that intuition more.

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

I’m telepathic. What’s the fucken point when you know someone’s about to break up with you or something’s about to go to shit, before anything’s even happened, and you can’t change squat?

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I love artsy movies, foreign language movies, swimming, power-walking to headphone music, reading collections of short stories or multi-authored anthologies… I’m quite a fussy reader, though. Certain books talk to me more than others, and I pay attention to those.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

I grew up reading African ‘how’ and ‘why’ stories: Why the crocodile lives in the water. How the zebra got her stripes. Why the hyena has two short legs… These were my favorite books, that always had a cultural or societal moral.

What genres won’t you read?

I don’t like erotica text for the sake of it. Sure, I love intimacy but bad sex is quite awful on page. I love something sensual that builds on an emotional connection rather than just a physical grind on a flesh whimsy.

What’s the single best line you’re ever read?

Michael Ondaatje. Divisadero, where, at Lucien Segura’s wedding, Marie-Neige—the woman who is not his wife—pulls a note from her cotton sleeve and pushes it into his breast pocket. It would burn there unread for another hour as he danced and talked with in-laws who did not matter to him… everything that was important to him existed suddenly in the potency of Marie-Neige:

The note she had written said Good-bye. Then it said Hello …

 

What are you currently reading?

I’m judging works for the 2025 Otherwise Award so I can’t name the works but I feel tremendously exhilarated to be in a position where I can pay attention to genre- and gender-expansive works that engage with difference in poignant ways.

Which literary invention do you wish was real and why?

A bit cliched… time machine, change outcomes—but would I really? What if the cascade effect of each alteration yielded far worse results?

 

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

Good Lord, no. I’m too curious, too easily spooked.

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Releasing February 17, 2026

Dark Speculative Poetry

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

This dark and thought-provoking poetry collection is co-authored by four multi-award winning authors and poets, Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold.

anOther Nemesis unravels sinister speculative poems themed The Colonizers, Primal Sources, Nameless Others and Crooked Ontologies. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.

The extraordinary assemblage interrogates the ways cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof are used as means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all... and more!

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Excerpts

Calibration by Eugen Bacon

worlding the merpeople insists on fundamental descaling and tail amputation without anesthetics to ascertain if the language of crying harbors an ideology of resistance

because the truth of a creature manifests itself

when its discomfort threshold

is breached.

A Home You Don’t Remember by Ai Jiang

How to Miss

You’re eager to sip sweet nectar

from deep chasms and explore

the long winding valleys of the place

of your birth. But how do you miss

a place that seems like only a passing

portrait because it has been so long

since your physical body roamed

across its soils, stepped into its marrows,

     uprooted

from its grooves, troughs, and furrows? 

a place renamed, unnamed, renamed,

until it has forgotten what it had been

before the touch of human hands, 

untrodden by human footprints,

now holding memories not its own.

Sun Wukong by Angela Yuriko Smith

The Monkey King—Sun Wukong, mischief embodied, irrepressible rebel birthed from stone to defy gods. His voice taunted heaven and teased immortals, arrogance wrapped in humor, wisdom hidden behind mirth. He defied limits, another snatcher of forbidden fruit, he grifted peaches of immortality and rewrote destinies with defiance. His laughter shook the celestial palaces; his clever tongue twisted divine decree into chaos, leaving order trembling in his wake.

Today, the Monkey King swings through digital jungles, flipping conventions and mocking algorithms with anarchic glee. He leaps across viral trends, prank videos, and meme culture, rebellious against the gravity of expectation. Sun Wukong is the chaos in the comment section, the unpredictable tweet that shatters expectations, the influencer who refuses to follow the script. He challenges censorship, mocks digital vanity, and playfully dismantles the serious facade of modern life, reminding humanity that freedom lies in laughter and that chaos is is needed for creation.

Defy all order—

Creation is subversive.

Freedom is laughing.

The Wall of Someday by Maxwell I. Gold

To Hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls;

in Hope to see towers that might stretch beyond limitation

outside my window or a house trapped

on the edge of a someday

I’d never know or to see what lay beyond the thick walls of night,

To Hope each time a great storm gathered,

cackling with heavy thunder and light,

I’d never know the words,

‘ne’er to pass the wall’

And to hope one day I might cross the threshold,

where the Gates of Tomorrow swung wide

and no longer the dark cruelties of today,

beat ceaselessly against my brain;

though with each passing night,

the storm’s call grew ever deeper,

‘never to pass the wall

and hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls.

About the other authors: 

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of A Palace Near the Wind, Linghun, and I AM AI. Find her at www.aijiang.ca.

Angela Yuriko Smith, former president of the HWA and publisher of Space and Time magazine, is the proud recipient of multiple awards, including two Bram Stokers. As a Publishing Coach, she helps writers search less and submit more with her weekly calendar of author opportunities at authortunities.substack.com.

Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre.  His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Eric Hoffer Award, Pushcart Prize, and Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.