Size / / /

 

 

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. Her poems have appeared in inkscrawl, Dreams & Nightmares, Polu Texni, On Spec, The Deadlands, and Liminality, but she is better known for her essays in The Toast and Atlas Obscura, and a microfiction project called postorbital. 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. You can find her fairly complete bibliography here.
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
Issue 19 Jan 2026
Issue 12 Jan 2026
Load More