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Direct link: November poetry (MP3)

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

  • “Mary Shelley Makes a Monster" by Octavia Cade, read by Chris Galford. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Octavia here.
  • “I Am Alive" by Lev Mirov, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Lev here.
  • “Actaeon" by Alice Fanchiang, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Alice here.
  • “Ranra's Unbalancing" by Rose Lemberg, read by Rose Lemberg. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Rose here.



Alice is a Taiwanese-American poet whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Liminality, Polu Texni, and Through the Gate. She loves magic, myth, and women who persist. She hates running. You can find her online at Girl On The Roam (girlontheroam.wordpress.com) or perennially on Twitter @kangaru, chatting about books and superheroes.
Chris Galford is a podcast reader for Strange Horizons.
Ciro Faienza (pronounced CHEE-roh) is an American/Italian national. He has acted on stages and screens throughout Texas and Massachusetts, and his work as a filmmaker has shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Hub Theater, and the National Gallery, London. His fiction is featured in numerous publications, including Daily Science Fiction and Futuristica, Vol 1. His short story "J'ae's Solution" was a top finalist in PRI's 3-Minute Futures Contest. You can see his visual artwork at his web gallery, Postmedium.
Julia Rios is a queer, Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose writing has appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed, and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Formerly a fiction editor for Strange Horizons, their editing work has won multiple awards, including the Hugo Award. Julia is a co-host of This is Why We're Like This, a podcast about how the movies we watch in childhood shape our lives, for better or for worse. They've narrated stories for Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. Find them on Twitter as @omgjulia.
Lev Mirov is a doctoral student in Tolkien Studies by day, and a novelist, poet, and medievalist by night. He has an MFA in crip ballet and decolonial theory, and lives on Piscataway lands with his husband Aleksei Valentìn. Their alternate histories, The Faerie States and The Peninsular Kingdoms, are Lev's passion. Follow him on Twitter @thelionmachine or explore further at patreon.com/levandalekseicreate.
Octavia Cade is a speculative fiction writer from New Zealand. Her latest book is You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories from Stelliform Press. She’s currently the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, and you can find her at ojcade.com, or on Bluesky at @octavia-cade.bsky.social.
R.B. Lemberg (they/them) is a queer, bigender immigrant from Ukraine to the US. R.B. is an author of six books of speculative fiction and poetry, an academic, and a translator from Ukrainian and Russian. R.B.'s latest novella Yoke of Stars (Tachyon, 2024) won the 2025 World Fantasy Award. Their other work has been shortlisted for the Le Guin Prize for Fiction, Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, Crawford, and other awards. You can find R.B. on Bluesky at @rblemberg.bsky.social, Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/rblemberg, and at their website: rblemberg.net.
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.
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