Find all the latest news and reviews of Sauúti-related work from across the web in one place.
NEWS
PODCAST: Eugen Bacon explores the migrant experience by creating a universe
Eugen Bacon is an award-winning speculative fiction author who is spending three months in Hobart as the Hedberg Writer in Residence at the University of Tasmania.
She explains to Lucie Cutting how she explores the African-Australian migrant experience by creating her own universe called the Sauutiverse.
This interview was originally broadcast on Tasmania Sundays on 2 June, 2024
LISTS: HWA Bram Stoker Award Reading List
6 Sauúti stories, featured in the Mothersound Anthology were included in the 2024 HWA Bram Stoker Award Reading List.
Short Fiction:
Lost In The Echoes – Xan van Rooyen
The Grove’s Lament – Tobias S. Buckell
The Way Of Baa’gh – Cheryl S. Ntumy
Undulation – Stephen Embleton
Xhova – Adelehin Ijasan
Long Fiction:
A City, A Desert & All Their Dirges – Somto Ihezue & Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Speculative fiction author Eugen Bacon to be 2024 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence
Sauúti Collective member Eugen Bacon has been awarded the $30,000 residency, which consists of a three-month stint in Hobart writing, working with students and taking part in community conversations.
Eugen will use the time to progress work on a new novel, Crimson in Quietus (A Sauúti novel), a new kind of mystery where the investigator is not a detective but a sound magic scientist.
INTERVIEW: Into the Sauútiverse
The Sauútiverse is a fascinating collaborative writing project born from the creative space Syllble.
Arturo Serrano spoke with Ghanaian author Cheryl Ntumy, one of the founding members of the Sauútiverse, about the conception of this fictional world and the ideas behind it. In befitting Sauúti fashion, the answers came from the writing collective as a whole.
ARTICLE: The Call of Sauúti
What exactly is the Sauútiverse? Eugen Bacon—an African writer based in Australia, and an active member of the SFWA, HWA, SFPA, BSFA, and BFS—tells us more about the amazing Afrocentric storytelling collective that’s fast-emerging.
ARTICLE: Dominant Themes in Afro-Centric Fiction, Aurealis #158
The Sauútiverse integrates a robust diversity of traditional African spirituality and cultural practices across the continent that hosts over 50 countries, 2000 languages and nearly 1.4 billion peoples. There’s much to draw from Mother Africa socially, politically, linguistically and we haven’t even got to the food: cassava, millet, sorghum, maize, yams, papaya, coconuts, mangoes, let alone cultural practices embracing birth, rites of passage, marriage and death... Storytelling has increasingly morphed itself into a critical artistic canvas for writers in African and the diaspora to channel their longing and memory, connection and belonging.
ARTICLE: Sauútiverse: Speculative African Writers Reshaping World Building
Every other day, we see and hear of the progress being made by Africans and Africans in the diaspora; in various fields and sectors. One, however, manages to be deep yet relatively quiet, and that is the world of speculative fiction, which has experienced major shakes by Africans in the last few years and perhaps beyond. As the world over begins to recognize and identify with the richness of our stories, strengthened by a culture of folklore and tradition, it becomes clearer how important the place of the continent is on the larger scale.
SEE ALSO:
First Look at The Sauútiverse: An African Interplanetary World-Building Project
BRITTLE PAPER, OCT 2022
A First Look at the Sauútiverse
AFROCRITIK, OCT 2022
Out of this world: why we created the first collaborative African fantasy universe
THE GUARDIAN, SEPT 2022
The Sauúti Fictional World: A Partnership Between Syllble and Brittle Paper
BRITTLE PAPER, JUNE 2022
REVIEWS
Mothersound Anthology Reviews
Starred Review from Publishers Weekly
Given this vast scope, there’s plenty of room for J. Umeh’s joyous “Kalabashing,” chronicling an interplanetary battle of the bands, to sit next to T.L. Huchu’s horror story “The Hollowed People,” in which a planet’s fragmented reality leaves its inhabitants both dead and alive at once. Eugen Bacon’s poetic neurodivergent dragonslayer tale “Sina, the Child with No Echo” fits in every bit as well as Xan van Rooyen’s futuristic story of a magical Deaf DJ in “Lost in the Echoes.” Released with a story bible and under copyright arrangements that will soon allow any African writer to add their voice to the collective, this feels like the start of something monumental.
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Mothersound Anthology Book Blurbs
