Award-winning Flame Tree Publisher, Nick Wells, and author Eugen Bacon are delighted to reveal the cover of her newest collection of Afro-irrealist tales—stories of longing, belonging, and the uncanny, deeply rooted in her African Australian heritage. K. Ibura’s foreword playfully weaves with Eugen’s text in a reflexive act that is also a deep dive into the psyche of the characters and stories.
Black Dingo is a cross-genre miscellany that embodies Eugen’s in-betweenness, her cultural voice both many-sided and indivisible. Within these genre-bending tales, the literary strange unfolds in collisions of worlds, shadows, and light, and the luminous terrain that exists between them.
Drawing on Eugen’s hybridity, Nick Wells has woven gold and blue into the design, inspired by Tanzanian patterns and the luminous skies of Australia. The inset illustration by Ghana-based artist Marvin Opuni Kwabia introduces a striking presence: a sideways gaze that hints at hidden depths, withheld truths, and keen, quiet observation. His interplay of fierce colour and deep blackness creates a bold contrast to the cover’s serene palette.
About The Author
Eugen Bacon is an Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus, and Foreword Indies Award winner. She is 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 announced on 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.”
Flame Tree will release the collection in October 2026 as part of its Beyond and Within series, with distribution in the US by Simon & Schuster and in the UK, Europe, and Asia by Hachette.
Black Dingo is proudly supported by Eugen’s 2024 Otherwise Fellowship, awarded by the Otherwise Motherboard.
