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AJ Odasso's poetry, nonfiction, and short stories have appeared in an eclectic variety of magazines and anthologies since 2005. AJ’s début collection, Lost Books (Flipped Eye Publishing), was nominated for the 2010 London New Poetry Award and was also a finalist for the 2010/2011 People’s Book Prize. Their second collection with Flipped Eye, The Dishonesty of Dreams, was released in 2014.  Their third-collection manuscript, Things Being What They Are, an earlier version of The Sting of It, was shortlisted for the 2017 Sexton Prize.  The Sting of It was published by Tolsun Books and won Best LGBT Book in the 2019 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards.  AJ holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University.  They teach at Central New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico.  They have served in the Poetry Department at Strange Horizons magazine since 2012.

Romie is a filmmaker and closed captioner. Her poems have appeared in inkscrawl, Dreams&Nightmares, Polu Texni, and Liminality, but she is better known for her essays in The Toast and Atlas Obscura, and a microfiction project called postorbital. She has been a guest artist of the National Gallery (London), the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art. You can find her fairly complete bibliography here.

Sonya's short fiction and poetry can be found in the collections Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press), A Mayse-Bikhl (Papaveria Press), Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books), and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books), and in various anthologies including The Humanity of Monsters, Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place, and Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror. She holds master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats.


AJ Odasso, Romie Stott, and Sonya Taaffe in our archives
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.
Issue 24 Mar 2025
Issue 17 Mar 2025
Issue 10 Mar 2025
By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
Issue 24 Feb 2025
Issue 17 Feb 2025
Issue 10 Feb 2025
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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