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Direct link: Poetry (mp3)

This week's podcast features the poetry for the January issues of Strange Horizons.  The first poem is "In the Courts of the Khan," by Lisa Bao, read by Julia Rios.  Second, "Watching for Aliens over the Allegheny," by Karen Weyant, read by Anaea Lay.  Third, "Heat and Sainthood," by Crystal Hoffman, read by Anaeaa Lay.  Finally, "Straw Man," by Sandi Leibowitz, read by Ciro Faienza.

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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.
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.
Crystal Hoffman's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Arsenic Lobster Anthology, WomenArts Quarterly, Redactions, and Whiskey Island. She is co-editor of Rusted Radishes: The Beirut Literary and Arts Review and an aspiring psychologist. Her chapbook Sulphur Water is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press.
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.
Karen J. Weyant's work has appeared in 5 AM, Cave Wall, Copper Nickel, and River Styx. She is the author of two chapbooks: Stealing Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt (winner of Main Street Rag's 2011 Chapbook Contest). "Watching for Aliens over the Allegheny" is her first speculative poem.
Lisa Bao is Chinese-Canadian with a mostly American upbringing. She officially studies linguistics and computer science, and unofficially fiction and poetry, at Swarthmore College.
Sandi Leibowitz has been, among other things, the Sands Point Hag, a psaltery player, a secretary at NY's Museum of Natural History, a fundraising associate, and a school librarian. Her speculative fiction and poetry may be found at Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, Luna Station Quarterly, and other far-out places.
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
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Issue 23 Feb 2026
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Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 Jan 2026
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