Angela Liu

Hi! I’m a speculative fiction writer/poet based in NYC and Tokyo with over thirty short stories and twenty poems published/forthcoming across a range of speculative and literary magazines.

I’m also a two-time Nebula Award finalist, a 2025 Hugo Award and Astounding Award Finalist, a 2025 Locus Award Finalist, 2023 Ignyte Award finalist, and a 2024 Rhysling Award recipient. Since my first pro publication in 2023, my work has also been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best of Small Fictions, longlisted for the BSFA Awards, featured on Reactor.com, and included on Locus’ annual Recommended Reading List.

Please sign up for my newsletter if you want updates on my editing/submission/publication journey! You can also check out the latest issue here)

For 2024 Nebula / Locus / Hugo:

I had ten stories published this year! I’d be honored if you read any of them, but the three I’m promoting for awards season:

1) “Another Girl Under The Iron Bell“
*2024 Nebula Award Finalist
*2025 Locus Award Finalist
*2024 Uncanny Reader Poll, 3rd Place

Published in: Uncanny #60 (Sep/Oct 2024)
Award Category: NOVELETTE
Word Count: 9,679
Genre: Dark Fantasy / Horror / Romance

“There is no limit to the number of curses in the world.”

– Inspired by the legend of Kiyohime, this story follows a beautiful demon haunted by a past love. Forced to work as an assassin for one of the emperor’s most trusted monks because of a cursed contract, she dreams of freedom and blood, until one job goes horribly wrong.

Read the story here.

Read about the historical/cultural inspirations behind the story here.

Read my Uncanny interview here.

2) “Before We Were Born”
Published in: Logic(s) Issue 21: Medicine & The Body (September 2024)
Award Category: SHORT STORY
Word Count: 3,047
Genre: Sci-fi

– In the summer of 2065, driven by a series of mass agricultural failures and growing overpopulation concerns, the Chinese government announces an exorbitant new tax on families with more than one child. For parents with terminally ill/bedridden children, a new brain–body exchange technology is offered that will allow them to temporarily lend their bodies to their children—an unprecedented chance at adulthood, but at a life-changing cost.

Read the story here.

Recommended on Reactor’s Reviewer’s Choice: The Best Books of 2024

3) “You Will Be You Again”
*2024 Locus Recommended Reading List

Published in: Interzone Digital (Apr 2024)
Award Category: SHORT STORY
Word Count: 6,003
Genre: Sci-fi

– “Here we are again, the same purple hallway they’ve paraded me down thousands of times before.”

A man has starts exhibiting symptoms of a strange new disease where you slowly forget who you are. A story inspired by the US healthcare system.

Read the story here.

I’m also eligible for the Astounding Award (in my 2nd year)!

Full List of Eligible Stories (2024)

NOVELETTES

  1. “Another Girl Under The Iron Bell” (Uncanny Magazine 60, dark fantasy/romance, 9679 words)*
    – a demon indentured to a monk must complete a dangerous assassination with a swordsman whose motivations are unclear

SHORT STORIES

  1. “Contract of Ink and Skin” (Uncanny Magazine 56, dark fantasy, 1479 words)*
    – in a town of mysterious apparitions and cursed ink tattoos
  2. “Firecrackers on 28 Mott Street” (World of Possibilities, cozy fantasy, 1000 words)
    – kids gather to make a miracle for their Chinese New Year
  3. “The Philosophical Quandaries of Meeting Your Doppelganger in Moonshine City” (Escalators to Hell: Shopping Mall Horrors Anthology, dark fantasy/horror, 4103 words)*
    – a girl reconnects with her childhood crush on the secret floor of a new mall
  4. “An Incomplete Body Has No Answers”  (Lightspeed, sci-fi, 968 words)
    – a woman gathers her partner, but some pieces of him are missing
  5. “Tiny Fires on the Toyoko Line” (Paranoid Tree, micro lit, 250 words)
    – a surreal train commute in Tokyo
  6. “You Will Be You Again” (Interzone Digital, sci-fi, 6003 words)
    – a man has started showing symptoms of a strange new disease where you slowly forget who you are. Inspired by experiences with the US healthcare system.
  7. “The Nightmare Delivery Service” (Small Wonders, dark fantasy humor, 424 words)*
    – would you like to order a nightmare for your worst enemy?
  8. “Sailor Moon Is Tired Of Fighting Evil” (hex, dark fantasy, 427 words)
    – an ode to the dark fanfiction I loved as a kid
  9. “Before We Were Born” (Logic(s): The Medicine and Body Issue, sci-fi, 3047 words)
    – What does it mean to live in a box? About brain-body transfers in a future Shanghai and one mother/daughter’s experience

Here’s my 2023 List (fourteen stories!) if you want to check out any of those stories/poems too.

Full List of Eligible Poems (2024)

LONG POEM

  1. “The Final Trick” (Strange Horizons)
    *2024 Rhysling Award Finalist
    *Recommended on Nerds of a Feather

SHORT POEM

  1. “If I Had a Time Machine” (Small Wonders)
  2. “A Wall of Keyholes” (Worlds of Possibility)
  3. “there are no taxis for the dead”  (Uncanny Magazine)
    *Nominated for 2025 Hugo Award
    *Nominated for 2024 Rhysling Award
  4. “3,000 Year Love Confession” (Heartlines Spec)
  5. “Mnemonic Burning” (Nightmare Magazine)

You can check out all 20+ of my poems here!