Holly Day

Dec 3, 2023 | dissidentvoice.org | Holly Day

I catch myself muttering to myself in heated conversation tossing my head angrily in reaction to some imagined conflict and the nice girl passing by asks me if I’m okay probably because I’m old now, possibly seem deranged and I want to tell her my head’s all backed up because I haven’t been able to write lately, words and debates and screams in general haven’t been let out the way they should, this is what happens when I can’t write I want to tell her, but then I’d have to explain what I...

Feb 22, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | E. C. Barrett |Fiona Lu |Holly Day |Kim Harbridge

Anne K. Yoder’s debut novel, The Enhancers, tells the story of three teen girls navigating life in the dystopian near-future town of Lumena Hills. Organized around the Lumena Corp pharmaceutical plant and the drugs it produces, the town is flush with pills that can do everything from enhance brain structures and decrease unpleasant feelings to erase memories which the swallower (or the pharmaceutical company) wish to be forgotten.

Feb 20, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Holly Day |Fiona Lu |Kim Harbridge |Samanta Schweblin

Content warning:This page contains: Death/dyingWe’ll know we’ve reached civilizationwhen our viewport shows nothing but bodies,floating caskets with see-through glass windows,helmetless corpses with bug-eyed heads twisted in agonymummies wrapped in cloth, dried into skeletonsby thousands of years of floating in a vacuumsilver capsules filled with ashessingle digits identified only by engraved tags and rings.

Feb 20, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Rachel Cordasco |Fiona Lu |Kim Harbridge |Holly Day

Like Fever Dream (2014), the haunting book that launched Schweblin into the anglophone literary world several years ago, Seven Empty Houses is deeply unsettling and surreal. Nothing frightening actually happens—there are no murders, supernatural guests, or weird noises here. Rather, we get main characters (often women) who can’t trust reality or their own senses, and, since Schweblin puts the reader in their heads, the effect is uncanny.

Feb 20, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Fiona Lu |Holly Day |Samanta Schweblin |Kim Harbridge

Content warning:This page contains: Body transformationFather, tell me why I was born / imitation of flesh. The yearshave swung shut / behind me and still my lust letters / to siliconhave gone unanswered, still / I have never felt the vitriolof a mother / ’s womb. Last night I / met a girl behind the factory,chipped / my teeth on her shoulder while she clasped / my namebetween her lips. She said / I was most lovable / when I wasthe parts / and not the sum.