From what began as a dialog between two adventurous writers curious about the shape-shifter called a prose poem comes a stunning collection that is a disruption of language-a provocation. Speculate is a hybrid of speculative poetry and flash fiction, thrumming in a pulse of jouissance and intensity that chases the impossible.
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One might describe some pieces as complex, relentless, but above all, speculating or crossing borders in the fantastic playground of language. We invite you to leap onto the stage of your own imaginings, plunge into what Henry James called the house of fiction.
This is how we envision ours:
A single detached house tossed out of Speculate settles across your dreams. Skin, paper-thin, desiccated and scripted like a collage, covers the absence of doors, thresholds, verandas, stairways and footpaths. But there are windows and louvers that look out to rain-licked grasslands. This is a house unsealed, with the sky art and earth art washed or rolled into each other on adjacent floors and walls. The roof, unlettered, is made of two sliding suns of creamed panels, foundation-like. Round the back is a rope ladder that will win you over. Up, up you go. Enter with care as you would any fiction that blurs the boundaries of genre, mode or form, that goes beyond the written and borrows from the unwritten. Together we can interweave art with language and watch it shape itself anew in an endless process of spontaneity and play because we can be here and there and away, all at once.
-Dominique Hecq and Eugen Bacon

EUGEN BACON is an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections. She's a finalist in the 2022 World Fantasy Award. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for 'doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction'. Her short story collection Danged Black Thing made the 2021 Otherwise Honor List. Eugen has won, been longlisted or commended in international awards, including the Aurealis Award, Foreword Indies, Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, Otherwise, Rhysling, Elgin, Australian Shadows, Ditmar Awards and Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction by Africans. ¿Visit her website at eugenbacon.com and Twitter feed @EugenBacon