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Direct link: April poetry (MP3)

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

  • “Minions" by Bryan Thao Worra, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bryan Thao here.
  • “Eating Verse" by Akua Lezli Hope, read by Romie Stott. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Akua Lezli here.
  • “Propagation" by Layla Al-Bedawi, read by Romie Stott. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Layla here.
  • “Neither/Nor" by Alleliah Nuguid, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Alleliah here.



Akua Lezli Hope, wisdom seeker and paraplegic creator of poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, and adornments, has been in print since 1974. Her collections include Embouchure (Writer’s Digest Book Award) and Otherwheres (Elgin Award). A Cave Canem fellow, her honors include NEA and NYFA fellowships, as well as SFPA, Rhysling, and IGNYTE awards. Her collection Telepath appears April 2026 from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
Alleliah Nuguid is from Fremont, California.  She is currently an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Boston University. Her poems can be found in Permafrost, The New York Times Learning Blog, Poets 11, and, anonymously, in an unauthorized biography of a 2011 San Francisco mayoral candidate.
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.
An award-winning Laotian American writer, Bryan Thao Worra holds a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a professional member of the Horror Writer Association and the Science Fiction Poetry Association. In 2012 he was a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the London Summer Games. His work has been featured internationally, including the Smithsonian traveling exhibit "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story," the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Parnassus during the 2012 London Summer Games.
Layla Al-Bedawi is a poet, writer, and bookbinder (among other things). English is her third language, but she's been dreaming in it for years. Born in Germany to Kurdish and Ukrainian parents, she currently lives in Houston, TX, where she co-founded Fuente Collective and champions experimentation, collaboration, and hybridity in writing an other arts. Her work is published in Liminal Stories, Mithila Review, Bayou Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her at laylaalbedawi.com and @frauleinlayla.
Romie Stott is the administrative editor and a poetry editor of Strange Horizons, and author of the horror novel Nothing in the Basement (Dybbuk Press, 2025). Romie's poems have appeared in inkscrawl, Dreams & Nightmares, Polu Texni, On Spec, The Deadlands, and Liminality, and elsewhere. You can find her fairly complete bibliography here. Outside of poetry, she is best known for her essays in Atlas Obscura, and short stories in Analog and Tractor Beam. As a filmmaker, she has been a guest artist of the National Gallery (London), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), and the Dallas Museum of Art, and is on YouTube as @romiesays. She is half of the electronica duo Stopwalk, and is the playwright behind the musicals "First, Contact" and The Lady Takes the Mic.
Current Issue
5 Oct 2026

In time, the entire shift’s 138 Express inbound transfers are processed, and I’m free to service passengers from other lines. These transfers are unremarkable. These passengers aren’t refugees.
Forgive me, someone.
Turn on the stove. See it startle.
In this episode of Critical Friends , the Strange Horizons criticism podcast, Dan Hartland is joined by Ryan Elliot and Rosanna Pendlebury, to ask questions about literary SFF. What is it? How do we know it when we see it? And what’s it good for?
Wednesday: Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler 
Friday: The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester 
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Wednesday: Khauf 
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