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Direct link: June poetry (MP3)

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

  • “Straw-Fitted Elephants" by Salik Shah, read by Angelle Haney Gullet. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Salik here.
  • “In Cellars, Monsters" by Zella Christensen, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Zella here.
  • “Hierarch" by Laura W. Allen, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Laura here.
  • “Two Children" by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, read by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Tendai here.



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.
Angelle Haney Gullett is a podcast reader for Strange Horizons.
Ciro Faienza (pronounced CHEE-roh) is an American/Italian national. He has acted on stages and screens throughout Texas and Massachusetts, and his work as a filmmaker has shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Hub Theater, and the National Gallery, London. His fiction is featured in numerous publications, including Daily Science Fiction and Futuristica, Vol 1. His short story "J'ae's Solution" was a top finalist in PRI's 3-Minute Futures Contest. You can see his visual artwork at his web gallery, Postmedium.
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.
Laura W. Allen (formerly Laura F. Walton) is alternately a writer, visual artist, and instructor currently living in Seattle. She has taught for The Writer's Garret of Dallas, McLennan Community College, and others; her work has been published in regional and national journals. Her website is www.laurawaltonallen.com.
Salik Shah is a writer, filmmaker, and the founding editor of Mithila Review, the journal of international science fiction and fantasy (2015-). His work has appeared on Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (Volume 2). Twitter: @salik. Website: salikshah.com.
Tendai Rinos Mwanaka has published over 200 short stories, essays, memoirs, poems, and visual art productions in over 100 magazines, journals, and anthologies, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His books include the political poetry collection Voices From Exile (Lapwing, 2010), Keys in the River (Savant, 2012), a novel of linked short stories, and Zimbabwe: The Blame Game, a creative nonfiction cycle published by Langaa RPCIG (2013). His website is www.facebook.com/tendai.mwanaka.
Zella Christensen is mostly from Wisconsin and studied creative writing at George Mason University. Her poetry has appeared in Star*LineMirror Dance, and elsewhere. She lives online at zellawrites.com.
Current Issue
24 Mar 2025

The winner is the one with the most living wasps
Every insect was a chalk outline of agony / defined, evaluated, ranked / by how much it hurt
In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Reprise by Samantha Lane Murphy, read by Emmie Christie. Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast: Spotify
Black speculative poetry works this way too. It’s text that is flexible and immediate. It’s a safe space to explore Afrocentric text rooted in story, song, dance, rhythm that natural flows from my intrinsic self. It’s text that has a lot of hurt, as in pain, and a lot of healing—an acceptance of self, black is beauty, despite what the slave trade, colonialism, racism, social injustice might tell us.
It’s not that I never read realistic fiction and not that I don’t like it. It’s just that sometimes I don’t get it. I know realistic fiction, speculative fiction, and genre fiction are just terms we made up to sell more narrative, but I’m skeptical of how the expectations and norms of realism lurk, largely uninterrogated or even fully articulated, in the way readers, editors, and publishers interact with work that purports to depict quote unquote real life.  Most broadly defined, realistic stories depict the quotidian and accurately reproduce the daily events, characters, and settings of the world we live
Issue 17 Mar 2025
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By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 3 Mar 2025
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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
Issue 6 Jan 2025
By: Samantha Murray
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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