Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future</i></a><i> </i>(Third Man Books, May 26, 2020) is her first fiction collection. Two multigenre/hybrid fiction and poetry collections, <i>Sleeping Under the Tree of Life</i>, longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and <i>Shotgun Lullabies </i>were published by Aqueduct Press. She edited the <i>Dark Matter </i>volumes (World Fantasy Award 2001, 2005)<i> </i>that first introduced W.E.B. Du Bois’s work as science fiction,<i> </i>and she was the first black author to be honored with the World Fantasy Award since its inception in 1975. Her work is widely anthologized and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received honorable mention in the <i>Year's Best </i>volumes. A Cave Canem Fellow, her poems and essays have appeared in the <i>New York Times </i>and other publications<i>.</i><i> </i>She serves as the Associate Editor of <i>Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora </i>(Illinois State University, Normal). She lives in Memphis, Tennessee. Find her on Instagram/Facebook <a href=https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/author/sheree-ren�e-thomas/"https://www.instagram.com/shereereneethomas/">@shereereneethomas and on Twitter <a href=https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/author/sheree-ren�e-thomas/"https://twitter.com/blackpotmojo">@blackpotmojo." />
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Sheree Renée Thomas creates art inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and the genius culture of the Mississippi Delta. Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Third Man Books, May 26, 2020) is her first fiction collection. Two multigenre/hybrid fiction and poetry collections, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life, longlisted for the 2016 Otherwise Award and Shotgun Lullabies were published by Aqueduct Press. She edited the Dark Matter volumes (World Fantasy Award 2001, 2005) that first introduced W.E.B. Du Bois’s work as science fiction, and she was the first black author to be honored with the World Fantasy Award since its inception in 1975. Her work is widely anthologized and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received honorable mention in the Year's Best volumes. A Cave Canem Fellow, her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times and other publications. She serves as the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State University, Normal). She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

Find her on Instagram/Facebook @shereereneethomas and on Twitter @blackpotmojo.


Current Issue
16 Mar 2026

The garden is the resting place of your vulnerabilities; there’s a reason you’ve left them here instead of carrying them with you. Typically you enter hardened and hurried, beelining straight for the correct plot and quickly releasing whatever is clutched in your hand without a second thought—today, an attempted weaving of leather and lace, strength and suppleness that your body cannot figure out how to wear, nor your words to narrate.
If you say there are rats, I will believe you, though I don’t hear or see them.
A ruffling of branches as they resettle for the night. We dare not ask why they are here.
Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
As part of a collective of African writers who have created an Afrocentric Sauútiverse of five planets, two suns and a spirit moon, a world of science and fantasy, where there is no written language, we play with technology and sound magic to scrutinise the world as we know it, and use speculative fiction as a response to our world. 
Friday: When Among Crows and To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth 
Issue 9 Mar 2026
By: Lio Abendan
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Issue 2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons
Issue 23 Feb 2026
Issue 16 Feb 2026
Issue 9 Feb 2026
Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 Jan 2026
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