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Direct link: July poetry (MP3)

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the issues.

  • “La Muerte" by Randi Anderson, read by Randi Anderson. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Randi here.
  • “A Self-Contained Riot of Lights" by Bogi Takács, read by Bogi Takács. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bogi here.
  • “Metamorphosis" by Juan Martínez, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Juan here.
  • “Grandmother" by Leslianne Wilder, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Leslianne here.
  • “VIMVIMRECOIL" by Heather Knox, read by Amelia June. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Heather here.



Amelia June is a reader.
Anaea Lay lives in Chicago, Illinois where she writes, cooks, plays board games, reads too much, and questions the benevolence of the universe. Her work has appeared in many places including Apex, Penumbra, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and Nightmare. She lives online at anaealay.com.
Bogi Takács (they/them or e/em) started working on the poetry / flash fiction series “Jobs for Magical People (That Do Not Involve the Military)” in response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. E would like to ask you to consider how authoritarian power manifests the world over (including in the stories we tell), then do something to counteract it. Bogi is a writer, poet, critic and scholar of speculative literature; and also a Hungarian Jewish immigrant to the US, a winner of the Hugo and Lambda awards, and a finalist for other awards like the Ignyte and the Locus. Eir second short story collection Power to Yield and Other Stories was published earlier in 2024 by Broken Eye Books, and eir poetry collection Algorithmic Shapeshifting is available from Aqueduct.
Heather Knox earned her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in decomP magazinE, Columbia Poetry Review, [PANK], and others. She currently lives in Washington with her husband and cat. She blogs at Almost Midwest.
Juan Martínez poems have appeared in An Island of Egrets haiku anthology and the San Diego Poetry Annual 2008; he's the author of Spooky Digital & Other Poems, Lab4, Patmos, High Voltage, and The God Poems, available through his website at jmebooks.tumblr.com. He is on Twitter @soldecactus.
Julia Rios is a queer, Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose writing has appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed, and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Formerly a fiction editor for Strange Horizons, their editing work has won multiple awards, including the Hugo Award. Julia is a co-host of This is Why We're Like This, a podcast about how the movies we watch in childhood shape our lives, for better or for worse. They've narrated stories for Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. Find them on Twitter as @omgjulia.
Leslianne Wilder is the current terminus of a straight line of armed East Texas matriarchs. She currently resides in Oxford, in the United Kingdom, with an exceptional spouse. Her short fiction has been published in Shock Totem, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane, among others. This is her first published poem. She blogs at Skull Honey.
Randi Anderson is a writer, musician, teacher, and foreign language enthusiast from rural Pennsylvania. She credits her travels and her students, as well as her gluttonous reading habit, for helping to inspire her fiction and poetry. Her website is www.randianderson.net.
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat
The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.
now, be-barked / I am finally enough
how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver
Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendlesohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
Friday: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 
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By: Holli Mintzer
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By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 27 Jan 2025
By: River
Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
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