About the Strange Horizons podcast

Strange Horizons is a speculative fiction magazine publishing diverse and impactful science fiction and fantasy stories, poetry, and reviews since September 2000.

Jump to section: SH podcast history • The Team
Our Shows: Critical Friends • Strange Horizons @ 25 • Writing While Disabled

The podcast was launched in 2016 as the audiobook arm of the fiction department, and quickly grew to encompass the poetry as well. In 2022, the Critical Friends podcast was added to the lineup, talking about all things SFF criticism, and in 2024 we began celebrating our 25th anniversary by launching Strange Horizons @ 25, an interview series with past contributors and staff charting the magazine's 25-year history while delivering sage writing advice. The latest addition is the Writing While Disabled podcast column, which tackles chronic illness and disability in the SFF writing community through fun interviews with special guests.

We are delighted to offer a variable podcast feed, alternating between any of our four shows on any given week. Just as the magazine is a smorgasbord of ideas, formats, and topics, the podcast seeks to reflect this by giving you lots to enjoy, from short fiction in audio format to interviews and discussions on all things science fiction and fantasy.

All interview and discussion podcasts are fully transcribed on our website, and of course all the fiction and poetry episodes have their text counterparts published on there too, so head over there to read the stories, and to find more extended show notes and links to everything the hosts and guests discuss.

The Team

The Strange Horizons Podcast was founded by Anaea Lay, with Ciro Faienza on Poetry Podcast duties, from 2016 to 2020. Courtney Floyd served as Editor between 2020-2022, alongside Kat Kourbeti who is still on the roster.

The current team consists of Senior Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti and Podcast Editor Michael Ireland, with Reviews Editors Dan Hartland and Aisha Subramanian taking charge on the Critical Friends podcast, and Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston producing and hosting the Writing While Disabled podcast.

Find out more at StrangeHorizons.com.

Our Shows

The main body of the feed is and will always be the Fiction and Poetry episodes, marked by the characteristic blue Strange Horizons podcast cover. Below is the list of other shows you'll find on our feed, which are more discussion based and feature roundtables and interviews with former and current contributors on topics ranging from literary criticism, disability support in SFF publishing, and writing/career advice from authors whose work we have published in our 25+ years on the internet.

Critical Friends

Hosted by Strange Horizons Reviews Editors Dan Hartland and Aisha Subramanian, Critical Friends is the SFF Criticism Podcast that dissects the art of the literary review in the science fiction field, plus other topics such as translating SFF, canon-building and genre boundaries, and more.

2024

2025

Strange Horizons @ 25

SH@25 is a series of interviews with authors, artists, poets, and former/current staff of Strange Horizons, charting the magazine’s 25 year trajectory from being founded in September 2000 to winning a Hugo in August 2024, as well as looking ahead at its future. Senior Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti spends an hour or so with each guest, asking how the magazine shaped their careers, how they in turn shaped the magazine, and soliciting some golden writing advice for the listeners who may be thinking about sending us some fiction or poetry in the future.

2024

2025

Writing While Disabled Season 2

While you can find season 1 of Writing While Disabled as a series of transcribed interviews on our website, season 2 takes the form of a podcast for that added audiovisual factor. Hear the episodes in audio here, or check them out on our website to read the transcripts or watch the full video with subtitles.

2025

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