"A Place Between Waking & Forgetting is dark speculative fiction, an Afro-Irreal collection in which transformative stories of culture, diversity, climate change, unlimited futures, collisions of worlds, mythology, and more, inhabit. It cases black people stories in bold and evocative text, at times deeply flawed but potentially redeemable protagonists in rich hues of blackness and light. Something beautiful, something dark in lyrical language packed with affection, dread, anguish and hope.
Featuring the World Fantasy Award finalist story “The Devil Don’t Come With Horns”, this collection of short stories is the latest offering by a genre-bending, multi-award winner.
It arrives with a poetic introduction by award-winning writer and poet Linda D. Addison, the first African-American recipient of the world-renowned HWA Bram Stoker Award, and has received five awards for her collections. Addison has been honored with the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, HWA Mentor of the Year and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry.
“These 18 impressive speculative shorts from Bacon (Serengotti) nimbly traverse subgenres while combining rich magic and mythology with a sharp exploration of what it means to be African both in and away from Africa.”—Publishers Weekly"
"Chasing Whispers is a unique Afro-irrealist collection of Black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, longing, hybridity, unlimited futures, a collision of worlds, and folklore. It contains thirteen stories, eleven of which are original, with a commanding introduction by D. Harlan Wilson. The collection is aligned with the themes of Eugen Bacon's other fiction, and her recognition in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for 'doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.'
Chasing Whispers casts a gaze at mostly women and children haunted by patriarchy, in stories packed with affection, dread, anguish, and hope. The connecting theme is a black protagonist with a deep longing for someone, someplace, something… and a recurring phrase in each story: 'a deep and terrible sadness.'"
"In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution …
Mafinga's malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi. But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine
that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death.
Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin’s children as her own. Jasmin is powerless—until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer."
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