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In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Elle Engel's Half Sick of Shadows read by Emmie Christie

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Elle Engel spent her childhood in central Illinois maxing out her mother's library card on stacks of Nancy Drew and Animorphs books and her teen years watching horror movie marathons during school nights. She currently lives in Chicago, where she writes horror and speculative fiction. She is currently working on her first novel.
Current Issue
12 Jan 2026

Despite the barriers between different cetacean languages, our song crosses the vastness of the oceans, traveling in sync with the currents and even traversing great expanses of land. Our singing conveys the concept of “hope,” which is how we define the wait until our home feels safe again.
When you falter, recall that age is not your master
Do you swallow big blue whale eyes straight out of the jar?
When Le Guin talks about genre writers as “the realists of a larger reality” we surrender the power of that when we narrow our work to only depict one type of future. We have great power to restore alternate narratives, to re-broaden the range of imaginable futures.
Friday: An Instruction in Shadow by Benedict Jacka 
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By: miriam
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