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Direct link: The Truth About Owls (mp3)

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Amal El-Mohtar's "The Truth About Owls." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Amal, here.

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Amal El-Mohtar is the Nebula-nominated author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and very short fiction written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey. She has thrice won the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem and once received the 2012 Richard Jeffries Society Poetry Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple venues online and in print, including Apex, Strange Horizons, Lackington's, and the special "Women Destroy Science Fiction" issue of Lightspeed magazine. She also edits Goblin Fruit, a web quarterly dedicated to fantastical poetry, with Caitlyn A. Paxson. She reviews books for Lightspeed and short fiction for Tor.com. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com or on Twitter @tithenai.
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.
Current Issue
6 Apr 2026

On the street, you will begin to see the faces of the dead in those of complete strangers.
In 2050—dreams and cityscapes wear the same exoskin.
Breathe. Breathe. Even though you are dead you must breathe— Oh, you are running. I suppose you could run. Run, then, if you never want to know what killed you, and why, and where you are now. For I have seen that thing like a great flying beast, which crackles and buzzes and trails smoke and light and fire as it comes down screaming from the sky. Then the sheer presence of it above you, and its impossible geometricality, its breadth and width like twenty war-wakas lashed together. But hovering, somehow, so gently. Something
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