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Direct link: May poetry (MP3)

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

  • “Spent" by Ruth Jenkins, read by Kat Mandeville. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Ruth here.
  • “The Liar's Charm" by Gillian Daniels, read by Gillian Daniels. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Gillian here.
  • “Red" by Charis M. Ellison, read by Charis M. Ellison. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Charis here.
  • “We Saw No Signs of Life" by Ting Gou, read by Ting Gou. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Ting 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.
Charis lives with her cat, Mithril, in a room full of books and craft supplies. She makes damn fine cakes. Her website is agreyeyedgirl.tumblr.com.
Gillian Daniels attended the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshop and afterward moved to Boston, MA. Her work appears in Apex Magazine, PodCastle, Flash Fiction Online, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet among others. She writes reviews for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.
Kat Mandeville is a podcast reader for Strange Horizons.
Ruth Jenkins writes speculative poetry and interactive fiction on cities, coding and magic. Ruth's writing has previously appeared in Goblin Fruit, Scheherezade's Bequest, and Verse Kraken. Her website is fractoluminous.tumblr.com.
Ting Gou's poems have appeared in Ghost Ocean Magazine, plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing, and the Nassau Literary Review, among others. She has a BA in molecular biology from Princeton, where she also completed a creative writing thesis. She is currently a medical student.
Current Issue
10 Aug 2026

the sleeping are so hard to distinguish / from the dead
We'd only lived in Arizona four years—it was our retirement place. But I'd died there, and she'd dumped my ashes out in the desert without fanfare, without any poem or prayer, unless you considered, “Jesus, Marty, don't leave me. Why'd you leave me, you old bastard" to be an elegy.
Nature, desecrated, refused to yield more than bone
Strange Horizons is looking to add an additional social media editor and a Patreon editor to our editorial collective. These roles will entail working in tandem with our existing social media editor, Isana Skeete, our fundraising editor, Josh Kidd, and our management team. 
Issue 3 Aug 2026
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Issue 13 Jul 2026
By: Aimee Ogden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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Issue 29 Jun 2026
Issue 22 Jun 2026
Issue 15 Jun 2026
Issue 14 Jun 2026
Issue 8 Jun 2026
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