Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (for her novel Serengotti), 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’. 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.

Eugen’s approach to mentoring: Equate advising a writer that their work is inadequate to telling a mother that her baby is ugly. To be published, the writer must, inevitably, give others entry to their precious world. The right mentor—author, supervisor, peer reviewer or editor— will position the artist to arrive at an articulate product. A repressive mentor is dangerous because they may, for more than a moment, stifle creative energy, humiliate the writer, perhaps usurp authorship, and inevitably lead to unproductive outcomes. An adventurous mentor nurtures, peaks ability, and introduces important tensions, surging from vital interrogations and finding answers to them, tensions that add value to the writing. I am an award-winning and experienced author, editor, teacher and mentor. I would like to think of myself as a mentor who is an axis for growth, one most focused in a respectful partnership that helps to draw out the best form of the author’s work now and into the future.