Description:
Speculate is a hybrid of speculative poetry and flash fiction, thrumming in a pulse of jouissance and intensity that chases the impossible.
Brief description: Eugen Bacon, MA, MSc, PhD, is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing. She's the author of Claiming T-Mo (Meerkat Press) and Writing Speculative Fiction (Macmillan). Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted or commended in national and international awards, including the Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Eugen is a recipient of the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Emerging Writer-in-Residence 2021. Her creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide, including Award Winning Australian Writing, Aurealis, Bards and Sages, Meniscus, TEXT Journal, Unsung Stories, British Science Fiction Association's Vector Magazine and through Routledge in New Writing. In 2020 she released The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories (Meerkat Press), Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction (Luna Press Publishing), Ivory's Story (NewCon Press) and Black Moon (IFWG).
Review Quotes:
"Rich and entrancing. This collection is not only a conversation between two literary impressionists-it is a narrative of art. With their words, Eugen Bacon & Dominique Hecq paint landscapes, both inner and outer, and all in stunning detail. In this book I delighted in finding messages and warnings relevant to the questions of today. Earth in existential crisis. Reefs formed within a human body. A Martian's dialogue reflected in its public art. Eugen & Dominique riff delightfully off each other as they offer up a speculative fiction smorgasbord of thoughtful insight-small dishes served with literary flavour. This is a highly recommended read for those who love language and find delight in morsel-sized fiction and prose poetry. " -Pamela Jeffs, author of Saloons & Stardust and Five Dragons
"A witty collection of dialoguing micro-fictions, "Speculate" associates the best of two of the most original voices of the moment. Highly intriguing and enjoyable, and as sharp as a dangerous kitchen knife." - Seb Doubinsky, award-winning author of the City-States Cycle
"In Speculate, Bacon and Hecq fence with fragments of fiction, and parry with paragraphs of prose poetry, in an elegant to-and-fro and that slashes language into surprising patterns with each progressive action. Without winners or losers, and without beginning, middle, or end, this is collaborative writing that doesn't score points, but exalts in the honed reflex of feint and riposte. Allez!" - Oz Hardwick, award-winning poet and academic
"Bacon and Hecq's call and response collaborative approach creates prose poems that echo and inform, entwine and correlate. Speculate is a pervasive pattern of democratic participation." - Andrew Hook, award-winning editor and author of Frequencies of Existence