Catching Up With Angel Leal
Angel returns with hope for our trans readers, detailed poetry processes, updates on the highs and lows of life, and fifty-five poetry recommendations that inspired them to write and hungrily read speculative poetry.
Angel Leal is a Latine, trans, neurodivergent writer whose previous work appears in Strange Horizons, Radon Journal, Uncanny Magazine, The Deadlands, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, and elsewhere. They’ve been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Rhysling, Best of the Net, and are a co-admin of CALAMITOUS, a queer SFFH writing group. You can find them at angel-leal.com or on Bluesky @angelvleal.bsky.social.
Angel is the author of “the time travel body” from Issue 8, “Please Get on the Ship” from Issue 4, and “The Machines Had Accepted Me For So Long” from Issue 2.
Angel’s previous Radon interview can be found here.
* * *
Before I start this interview, I have one thing I want to say to my trans and nonbinary family:
After everything, after every law passed, after every right taken and attempted to be taken, you still exist, and you deserve life. Please continue to live.
Please continue to piss off bigots with your art, with your voice, with your existence that is so frightening to them.
You who complicate the status quo are the monster of the moment. But there has always been and will always be a “monster” to distract this country. And we will survive as others have survived. Solidarity and refusal, refusing to stop fucking existing.
Q: What has changed for you since we last spoke in 2023?
Many things have changed. For one, when we last spoke, I was still struggling through an education degree and hadn’t come to terms yet with how much my undiagnosed ADHD was affecting my life.
Now, I’ve gotten diagnosed and am finally on my way to getting help. But the process has been long. I know now that so much of who I’ve tried to be was going against my own body and mind, and I want to learn to take care of them now.
Another change is that I’ve finally spent time in a real middle school classroom! And what I can say is that even though I knew I wanted to teach, it wasn’t until I was really there every day that I knew how much the potential of each student could mean to me. Maybe that sounds obvious, but I didn’t know until I met them how funny, strange, inspiring, painful, and wonderful my experience would be.
There were so many kinds of days—days when a student made progress before your eyes and you could somehow think of the right words to convey it to them, and you knew they believed you. And you held that wonderful moment and took it home—and days when novels were taken out of a curriculum and you saw your mentor teacher furious and helpless with the choices made above them.
There were petty disappointments and there were inspirations that I’ll keep my whole life.
On my last day at my school, I had a one-hour off period due to PLC being canceled and decided to head to the gym for PE. The students had wanted me to play basketball and volleyball with them for weeks and . . . you know what? That day I joined in and played both. :)
The girls straight up whooped me at volleyball! I’ll tell you that. They were super serious and deadly with their sets, but I had my moments. We had some back and forth that got the kids yelling like crazy and it was fun as hell. Then for the last twenty minutes I joined the boys, and that’s a sport I played, so I looked less foolish. :) The old baller of yore returned and we were all just thrilled beating hearts for a while. We were gym rats making music.
When it was over, I washed my face in the bathroom, walked to class, and taught my last periods with them. Already I felt the ache in me when a student surprised me with a painting of a whale leaping out of an ocean. She wanted me to give it to my mother because she’d been diagnosed with gallbladder cancer a while ago and it was hard not to cry in front of her. I did a bit when I said my final goodbyes, and more when I went home. Children are like that, you know, they remember things you say. And they shock and surprise and move you all the time with their earnestness.
Anyway, that’s where I am now: graduated and healing. Trying to figure out what to do next in life when under Trump’s presidency it will be even less safe than ever for trans and nonbinary teachers.
I don’t want to be closeted for years as I teach, but I don’t know what I’ll do right now. All I can say is that I’m not the same scared person you interviewed two years ago. I’ve grown a little bit, and I hope to be somewhere even healthier, safer, and more certain in the next interview.
Q: For those who aren’t typically readers of poetry, what would you say to them to entice them to try reading speculative poetry?
I feel there are two ways I can answer this. I can say what spec poetry has done for my own imagination and inner life—how it has changed me to be a part of this community of dreamers. How even when life has been most hectic or painful, the brevity of spec poetry’s magic has been my balm. How I go to it when I’m worn out, even depressed, and don’t feel I have the energy even to finish a story. At those times, I turn again to spec poetry to help me feel dreamy. To help me feel hungry, to imagine again. But the second (and probably more effective) invitation I can give to spec poetry is to share poets and poems that have moved and enchanted me at times when I needed it.
Below is what may be an inappropriately long list—but I couldn’t help myself. I love the worlds they showed me. I love their mixture of wild invention and emotion. I limited myself to fifty-five poets that have inspired me to write and hungrily read speculative poetry.
One per writer was hard, so please read more of their beautiful things! (Also . . . some poems are favorites from the past, but several are from 2024 and are eligible for awards if you find some that enchant you too. :))
Marisca Pichette’s “Every robot has a switch she can’t reach” (2024)
Terese Mason Pierre’s “In Dreams I Cannot Read or Hope” (2024)
Avra Margariti’s “01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101” (2024)
Brandon O’Brien’s “The Creature from the Black Lagoon is your father” (2023)
Timi Sanni’s “The Robot Malfunctions in Want of Locks and Braids” (2024)
Vanessa Jae’s “the fear of cyborgs to believe in flesh” (2022)
Ennis Rook Bashe’s “hemiplegic migraine as willing human sacrifice” (2023)
Joemario Umana’s “SOCIETY’S LEARNERS DICTIONARY ON DEFINING A BOY” (2024)
Mahaila Smith’s “Chemical Rebalance for Young Cyborg Housewives” (2023)
Betsy Aoki’s “A tenjō kudari (“ceiling hanger” yōkai) defends her theft” (2020)
Goran Lowie’s “Five Things said by the Deity's Lover” (2023)
Arda Mori’s “A Record of My Emperor After the Elixir of Life” (2024)
Q: What brought you to writing “the time travel body”?
The time travel body was written after a bad day. (I had unfortunately checked on an old Facebook account that I don’t use anymore. On my recommended friends I saw someone again who used to be one of the best friends of my life.)
I shouldn’t have gotten curious, but it’s the same old story. I checked and found so much straight-up open bigotry that it just stunned me. I saw what he would think of someone like me. I don’t know, it never feels like you’re ready to see that.
That feeling is what this poem is about. The confusing pain in your stomach when you go through so many memories. It’s the closest thing to time travel, and the people you loved are barely recognizable. (It’s possible my friend feels the same looking at me, but for a very different reason.)
Besides this disconnect, what inspired this poem were my feelings towards my new workout at the time. That sounds strange, but the thing is, I had stopped exercising for years because of serious eating disorders and injuries. This was the healthiest I’d ever felt taking care of my body. It wasn’t about getting as strong as possible anymore. For once, it was about movements that felt healing and gave me energy. It wasn’t about how I looked and that process reminded me even in my happiness of how damaging and obsessive men can be about other men’s bodies too.
The way my arms and stomach would be squeezed playfully, jeered at by friends if I put on weight or lost muscle and how much it bothered me deep down. The way I’d exercise too intensely just before visiting a friend at all. Or else, the way I’d just stay home without seeing anyone if I didn’t exercise tirelessly beforehand, and that could lead to months of isolation.
Now, I see how unhealthy that young person was and this poem is about that too. When the body travels through time, it can be very difficult to let yourself see everything it’s been through with you.
Q: Did your poem’s unique tercet formatting spring from the onset of the poem or develop during editing?
I’ve noticed lately that when I first write a poem, the first thing on my mind is an intense feeling. The story itself and even the discoveries I’m hoping to find come after these feelings and a need to release. (The first feelings I felt were regret, and well, shame . . . until the final cathartic lines of standing up to a past that limits who you can be.)
After the feeling comes the form and I don’t exactly know why a shape feels right as it happens but it often takes off after the first stanza.
This poem first began like this:
“the time travel body
mourns as it
repeats its mistakes.”
It’s not done, but the most important part for me was that it took its time. The lines are short and I want to wait and speak slowly of how the time traveler feels knowing they’ve somehow repeated the history of their body’s mistakes. I’m not strategizing this effect as I’m writing it, but I’m joyfully noticing it after the first lines are on the page. It feels right to write it and speak it slowly.
But then, it’s still missing something. It feels too orderly somehow and I want it to move. That’s when I play with space.
“the time travel body
mourns as it
repeats its mistakes.”
Now, I’m feeling something. I don’t know why at first but I go on and try to have faith that the time traveler’s story will flow in this rhythm. Short stanzas, shorts steps back and forth through time.
When the whole poem is done I finally get a sense that the words need to move around and slowly travel the page to mimic the unconfident movements through the memory of my time traveler.
(This is as close as I can remember the early building of this poem and I’m missing things. But also, not all poems shape themselves like this! Some of my poems took years to find their final shape and form. Some are unrecognizable and I feel a kind of love for their baby form that mostly came from intuition.)
Anyhow, thank you for asking. I hope this quick little example can help demystify the process just a bit for anyone starting to explore the writing of any poetry. Even when writing about something painful, it’s so fun and empowering to discover form and meanings as you go, to just write and write in the middle of the night and accidently discover how you really feel.
Q: Has your LGBTQ+ writing workshop, CALAMITOUS, continued to grow and develop?
It has! Even though, (because of home-life difficulties) I’m playing a smaller role in where it goes for the moment. I’ve been deeply proud and excited with the work of other members stepping up at Calamitous.
Actually, a few months ago, I read at a Spooky Horror Campfire reading in which members, in the style of a queer Midnight Society, read a scary story before an imaginary campfire of friends on Zoom. It was amazing! (And it was Halloween season so our writers brought the queer darkness but we take all genres throughout the year.) And let me tell you, our hosts (camp counselors) Ceal and Teddy, really work hard to build a comforting and safe space for writers to practice their skills of reading aloud and to a real audience. And that, besides the fun of themes and hanging out with friends, was the true hope—to naturally and slowly build confidence for marginalized voices. Personally, I’ve already attended several of our Campfire Reads to help myself believe in my reading voice and it’s been beautiful to see my friends grow into theirs.
Along with this, we have “The Secret Kelpie” coming up which is a White Elephant inspired gifting of stories to random members who make a wishlist of vibes they’d love to read for their present. :) It’s a lovely little tradition and I could go on and on. (Flash fiction Contests where Teddy makes a sick new “issue”cover for every winner and participant, queer/BIPOC crit groups with passionate writing friends, and more things . . .) But the main thing is that I’ve met wonderful new members every year and it’s been such a safe and comforting space for me. I really miss being more involved and can’t wait till things calm down so I can hang with my friends more often.
Q: How has your journey of honing your flash and short story skills been going?
I’m more motivated than ever to speak through my work and scream through it. Specifically, I’m working on Mexican trans-horror stories very different from the poetry I’ve written. They range from folkloric body horrors to fallen angels to liminal bathrooms. But what unites them are particularly vulnerable times in a trans person's life—their egg stage and pre-transition crossroads of hope and intense fear.
This is the horror I know right now. I’ve not escaped. And to my regret, I sense that after this election, a whole new generation of trans youths will feel trapped in this limbo as well. For them and myself, I want to write for the rest of my life.
On the other end, magical realism is my other outlet of release. I’m deeply thankful to say that my first flash story was published last year. “A Book is a Map, a Bed is a Country” was published in Uncanny right in the middle of election day and within the horror of its aftermath. (I will talk much more about how I felt and how it affected people I care about in the next question.) What I want to focus on here is a thank you to everyone who showed me and my writing love on that awful day. Thank you with all of my heart, it meant the fucking world.
Q: How are you holding up during an election year in Texas?
(The reader of this interview might have noticed some timeline inconsistencies here and there. That’s because honestly some of these questions were answered months ago and some of them I could only finally finish after being in a better mental state. Thank you, Radon, for being so patient.)
I’m answering this question the day after the election’s outcome has been decided. And it is a devastating outcome. For my family, for my community, for my students, for my country. Yesterday felt paralyzing and surreal, and because I am in the middle of clinical teaching, I knew I would have to go to class anyway.
I wasn’t completely myself that day but I tried to keep my composure around the students. It wasn’t until I was alone with my mentor teacher, and he asked how I felt, that I surprised myself and cried while we talked. I didn’t really want to, but I was so angry, and he was kind at that moment.
Still, I wasn’t comfortable enough to explain that I was trans and that so many policies in the next few years were going to directly impact my safety and the safety of trans people I love. I told him about trans family and friends I worried for but not about myself. And that hiding really hurt somewhere inside me. Not sharing how close I was, how difficult it could become to transition even as an adult in a worst-case scenario.
(I’m not giving up on HRT but it’s going to take time. I know that now but I refuse to let them break that part of me. Because transness in my heart does not end with my body, it is not so simple as what I look like to others or myself. It is something in my mind that no man and no government can take away from me.)
Later in the day, a student in the ESL class I run was very upset about the election too. I won’t go too into it but she worried for the rest of her family who haven’t gotten to immigrate to America yet. She’s in 7th grade, and a brilliant, talented girl. And she’s worried of her own ability to retain American citizenship under this hateful rhetoric. That is so disgusting to me. All I could tell her was that she’s already a great student, and her wanting to learn is out of their control, it is in her control. We did our lesson that day in a quiet rage and passion and her sentences were particularly strong when she wrote on that day. I was proud of her and in that class I didn’t cry. I don’t think I felt pain.
This was some of my day and some of the people I saw. But everyone I saw was affected. On social media, I found writers I deeply respect mourn and rage too. I love them. I hope they and I continue to create with this fire. Particularly immigrant, and BIPOC, and trans, and queer, and disabled people who are in deep pain over this country’s decision to support hate and attempt erasure while continuing to aid a genocide.
Q: Have you seen any changes in the SFF industry these past two years?
Some of the best changes I’ve seen and that I hope to always see are the emergence of bold new voices, (especially BIPOC and queer voices.)
I know I’ve already given a huge list, I’m sorry, but here are a few of my personal favorite writers from the past couple of years that I can’t wait to read more from.
(Albert Chu, M. M. Olivas, Gabrielle Emem Harry, Lore Lopez, Akis Linardos, Everett Alistair, Vivian Chou, A.W. Prihandita, Sara S. Messenger, V.M. Ayala, Rukman Ragas, Simo Srinivas, Ash Vale, J.L. Akagi, M. R. Robinson, Diana Dima, and Hannah Yang.)
All of these writers are doing incredible and fresh work that genuinely moves me. I hope they keep creating and know their work is loved.
Some of the saddest changes have been the closing of magazines I’ve respected with my whole heart like Fantasy Magazine, Apparition Lit, and Anthema: Spec from the Margins (until a new team of editors takes the mantle.) All three of these magazines have a profound track record of supporting marginalized writers from around the world. All three provided invaluable opportunities for voices struggling to be heard and that need to be heard now more than ever.
The thing is though, sometimes magazines and their creative visions are reborn. As everyone knows by now, Fantasy is back! And that is a huge deal for the SFFH community. It is always a loss to us all when there are fewer BIPOC/queer editors running a magazine, period. And the fact that Fantasy is bringing on both Shingai Njeri Kagunda and Arley Sorg as editors means everything. It gives me hope.
Of course, there have been other changes, rises, disappointments, controversies, and ridiculously damaging forces introduced to our field like AI.
A lot of things have happened, and I am not as innocent about our industry as I was years ago, but I still believe in it. Or rather, I believe in the individual human beings that are the lifeblood of its progress—the writers and editors and slush readers and artists who keep working, keep creating when I know they must be struggling too—because they believe desperately in what we’re doing. I believe in them, in us.
I also say us for another reason.
(I might not be able to disclose everything just yet but…a secret new magazine that’s coming soon may have reached out and asked me to be their poetry editor…and uh, reader, I may have said yes!!!)
Sooo, yeah, I freaked out and immediately agreed. And now, I’m very, very excited to finally be on the other side, to give new voices a chance to be heard. It means everything to me.
(And for anyone interested, you’ll hear more about this mysterious magazine in May 2025!!)
Q: What led you to creating a “News” section on your personal author website?
My partner actually helped me create my whole website. They did some coding in their past and did so much to help my publications feel like they had a digital home to hold them.
The News section was meant to replace the “interviews” section so that I could still have interviews but also add happy news like getting second place for the Rhysling Award. (It’s still hard to believe that happened.) The only trouble is that life has made it difficult to find time to add updates as they happen. It makes me feel genuine admiration for so many writers who, through sheer will, keep up with their websites and work hard to communicate with readers. Y’all are amazing to me.
Q: With poetry sales in many of the biggest markets, where do you want to take your poetry next?
First, it has been a joy beyond what I ever imagined for myself to have my poetry published at all. I want to be open about that because it would have never happened if my partner didn’t help me with my English grammar and believe in me so fiercely.
I didn’t believe in myself for years and was not even in college when we met. I was still a high school dropout, hadn’t got a GED, and creative writing felt like a world I could never imagine myself surviving in.
But one sale, sometimes just one, can help you see who you can become—who you want to become. When Strange Horizons first gave my voice a chance it opened a new world.
I found in the speculative poetry community, the first place where I felt creative, where I had potential to learn a craft I loved. (It was here too, in my bios under poems, where I first let myself use they and she pronouns in public. It may seem simple, but those small steps meant everything to the me I’m still learning how to be.)
Now, my goal and dream for the years to come is to submit my first poetry book manuscript and to discover and give a home to new poets as an editor. Both seemed so impossible once, but not anymore.