AGNI’s Awards

Past awards given by AGNI

These $300 prizes for fiction, poetry, and translation were given from 1999 to 2001 to honor writers for important work published in AGNI the previous year. From 2000 to 2002, we also awarded a $300 prize for literary editing outside of AGNI, and in 2000, with the help of a now-depleted grant from the Harvard University Ukrainian Research Institute, we added an annual $1,000 Solomea Pavlychko Prize for Literary Criticism, in memory of one of our contributing editors, who died tragically on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Award winners

The John Cheever Award for Short Fiction

2001: Julia Thacker for “The Funeral of the Man Who Wasn’t Dead Yet,” AGNI 51
2000: John R. Keene for “An Outtake from the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” AGNI 50 (Honorable mention to Perrin Ireland for “Night Shift,” AGNI 49)
1999: Pamela Painter for “Sympathy,” AGNI 47 (Honorable mention to Chuck Bock for “The Next Big Thing,” AGNI 47)

The Anne Sexton Poetry Award

2001: John Peck for “A Metal Denser Than, and Liquid,” AGNI 51
2000: Philip Levine for “Keats In California,” AGNI 49 (Honorable mention to Patricia Spears Jones for “Sapphire,” AGNI 49)
1999: Peter Viereck for “Small Fry,” AGNI 47 (Honorable mention to Larissa Szporluk for “Harness,” AGNI 47)

The William Arrowsmith Translation Award

2001: Louis Bourne for his translations of five poems by Rafael Alberti, AGNI 52 (Honorable mention to Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright for her translations of eleven German poems from the 2000 Jahrbuch Der Lyrik, AGNI 53)
2000: Byron Lindsey for his translation of Victor Pelevin’s “Three Greek Versions,” AGNI 48
1999: David Ferry for Virgil’s “First Eclogue,” AGNI 48 (Honorable mention to J. Kates and Bohdan Boychuk for “In Memory of Paul Celan” by Moishei Fishbein, AGNI 48)

The Ed Hogan Award for Literary Editing (established in 2000)

2001: George Hitchcock for his work at Kayak
2000: Alexander Taylor and Judith Doyle for their work at Curbstone Press

The Philip Guston Prize (for a combined work of writing and photography)

1999: Eric McHenry, writer, and Gary Logan, artist, for “Witness, Building, Living Room, and Collision” (Honorable mention to David Ryan, writer, and Susan Breen, artist, for “The Women”)

The Solomea Pavlychko Award for Literary Criticism (est. 2000)

2002: James Wood
2001: John Leonard
2000: Susan Sontag

Awards/Honors received by AGNI

The 2001 PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing (awarded to then-Editor Askold Melnyczuk)

This biennial award, which “honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and tastes have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits,” was conferred with a $2,500 prize in New York City before a standing-room-only crowd of some 1,000 people.

Text of the award:

Thirty years ago, as a high-school student, Askold Melnyczuk founded an underground newspaper that he reproduced on a ditto machine in the attic of his family’s house. During his time as an undergraduate at Antioch College, this paper gradually morphed into a literary journal, now set by hand in a printing class and printed on a college press. In the twenty-some years since then, the journal that Melnyczuk named AGNI after ‘the Vedic god of fire and guardian of humankind’ has become a beacon of international literary culture, shining into even the darkest corners of its hometown of Boston, Massachusetts. Among readers around the world, AGNI is known for publishing important new writers early in their careers, many of them translated into English for the first time. In Boston, AGNI is known also for the reading series that brings writers famous and not so famous to the city, and for the Burke High School Writing Center that Melnyczuk founded and continues to support. AGNI has become one of America’s, and the world’s, most significant literary journals, and it is fitting that it and Askold Melnyczuk should be honored this year with the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing.

Reprints and Mentions in Prize Anthologies:

The Pushcart Prize anthologies: Best of the Small Presses

2025: “Afterlives” by Sarah Khatry, from AGNI 98
2024: “Ars Poetica” by Janiru Liyanage, from AGNI 96
2024: “Ballad That Ends with Bitch” by Diane Seuss, from AGNI 96
2023: “Utter, Earth” by Isaac Yuen, from AGNI 94
2022: “Gutted” by Cathyryn Klusmeier, from AGNI 91
2019: “The Great Meal” by Jung Hae Chae, from AGNI 86
2017: “Tolstoy and God” by Brian Morton, from AGNI 84, and “The Plate-Spinner” by Steve Stern, from AGNI 83
2015: “Book of Forget” by Rebecca Hazelton, from AGNI 75
2014: “Cadiz, Missouri” by Robert Long Foreman, from AGNI 75
2013: “Azeroth” by Jen Percy, from AGNI 74
2011: “things we’ll need for the coming difficulties” by Valerie Vogrin, from AGNI 69, and “Barter” by Ravi Shankar, from AGNI 70
2009: “Bendithion” (essay) by Harrison Solow, from AGNI 66
2008: “Blessing the New Moon” (essay) by A. P. Miller and “Confession for Raymond Good Bird” (story) by Melanie Rae Thon, from AGNI 63
2006: “Glaciology” (essay) by Lia Purpura and “After Herodotus” (poem) by Tom Sleigh, from AGNI 60
2003: “Bi Bi Hua” (essay) by M. Elaine Mar, from AGNI 55
2002: “The Lives of Strangers” (story) by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from AGNI 53
1988: “Menses” (poem) by Marie Howe, from AGNI 24/25

The Best American Short Stories

2016 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Desire and Other Isms” by Heather Abel, from AGNI 82
2015 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Romaine Remains” by Megan Mayhew Bergman, from AGNI 79
2014: “Medium Tough” by Craig Davidson, from AGNI 77
2013 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Tics” by Wendy Rawlings, from AGNI 76
2013 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Stone” by Edith Pearlman, from AGNI 75
2012 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Implanted Devices” by Gabriel Brownstein, from AGNI 74
2011: “A Bridge Under Water” by Tom Bissell, from AGNI 71
2011 (Other Distinguished Stories): “The Boys’ School, or The News from Spain” by Joan Wickersham, from AGNI 72
2011 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Wolf” by Marjorie Sandor, from AGNI 71
2010 (Other Distinguished Stories): “All the Black Hearted Villians” by Tamas Dobozy, from AGNI 70
2010 (Other Distinguished Stories): “The Indifferent Beak” by Giles Harvey, from AGNI 70
2010 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Caiman” by Bret Anthony Johnston, from AGNI 69
2009: “The Farms” by Eleanor Henderson, from AGNI 68
2007 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Monsieur le Genius” by Paul Eggers, from AGNI 63
2006 (Other Distinguished Stories): “Poster Child” by Nicholas Montemarano, from AGNI 62, and “On Junius Bridge” by Edith Pearlman, from AGNI 61
2005 (Other Notable): “My Father, the Perfect Man” by Vivek Narayanan, from AGNI 59
2002: “The Sugar-Tit” by Carolyn Cooke, from AGNI 53
(Honorable Mention for Chitra Divakaruni’s “The Lives and Strangers” and Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s “Sightings of Loretta,” both from AGNI 53)
1999: “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri (winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize and The New Yorker Prize for Best Debut Book of Fiction), from AGNI 47
1990: “The Wizard” by C. S. Godshalk, from AGNI 28
1988: “All Friends, No Strangers” by Lucy Honig, from AGNI 24/25

The Best American Poetry

2024: “First Philosophy” by Joshua Bennett, from AGNI 98
2024: “Shopping Lists” by Sarah Luczaj, from AGNI Online
2020: “Hyacinth Aria” by Sharon Olds, from AGNI 89
2019: “Four Marys” by Paisley Rekdal, from AGNI 87
2017: “Elegy with a Gold Cradle” by Cyrus Cassells, from AGNI 83
2014: “My Father’s Soul Departing” by David Wojahn, from AGNI 76
2013: “Book of Forget” by Rebecca Hazelton, from AGNI 75
2011: “To My Lover, Concerning the Yird-Swine” by Julianna Baggott, from AGNI 72
2011: “Drunk at a Party” by Lee Upton, from AGNI 69
2011: “A Hundred Bones” by C. K. Williams, from AGNI 72
2009: “A Sea-Change” by Derek Walcott, from AGNI 67
2009: “At the Pool” by Tom Sleigh, from AGNI 65
2008: “from Hallelujah Blackout” by Alex Lemon, from AGNI 65
2002: “Self-Portrait with Critic,” by Ira Sadoff, from AGNI 53
2001: “T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M.” by Thomas Sayers Ellis, from AGNI 52
“The Singers Change, the Music Goes On” by Linda Gregg, from AGNI 52
2000: “A Metal Denser Than, and Liquid” by John Peck, from AGNI 51

The Best American Essays

2024 (other notable essays): “Zugunruhe” by Kathryn Nuernberger, from AGNI 98
2024 (other notable essays): “Looking Out for Humanity” by William Pierce, from AGNI 98
2024 (other notable essays): “Unbending Progress” by Ishion Hutchinson, from AGNI 97
2023: “Concision: A Sprawl” by George Estreich, from AGNI 96
2023 (other notable essays): “Self-Portrait as Dumbo the Elephant” by Karl Kirchwey, from AGNI 96
2023 (other notable essays): “Everything and More” by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, from AGNI 95
2023 (other notable essays): “Postcards of the Night Sky” by Kelle Groom from AGNI 95
2020: “Ghost Museum” by Elvis Bego, from AGNI 90
2020 (other notable essays): “Byron Was Here” by Jodie Noel Vinson, from AGNI 90
2020 (other notable essays): “The Cracked and the Crazed” by Erica X Eisen, from AGNI 90
2020 (other notable essays): “Losing, Finding, Improvising” by coeditor Sven Birkerts, from AGNI 89.
2014 (other notable essays): “Castle Hill” by K. E. Duffin, from AGNI 80
2014 (other notable essays): “On Practice, School Buses, Hummingbirds, Rumi, and Being Led” by Carol Ann Davis, from AGNI 79
2013 (other notable essays): “Go Tell Your Father” by Martha Cooley, from AGNI 76
2013 (other notable essays): “It Wants to Find You” by Sven Birkerts, from AGNI 76
2013 (other notable essays): “On Pointing” by William Eaton Warner, from AGNI 75
2012: “A Beauty” by Robert Boyers, from AGNI 74
2011 (other notable essays): “The Knife Handler” by Phyllis Barber, from AGNI 71
2010 (other notable essays): “Walking: An Essay on Writing” by Peter LaSalle, from AGNI 70
2010 (other notable essays): “When History Gets Personal” by Mimi Schwartz, from AGNI 70
2008 (other notable essays): “Shadowboxing: Daytripping Chatila” by Askold Melnyczuk, from AGNI 66
2008 (other notable essays): “The Thinker in the Garden” by Sven Birkerts, from AGNI 65
2008 (other notable essays): “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium” by Marie Mutsuki Mockett, from AGNI 65
2008 (other notable essays): “The Lustres” by Lia Purpura, from AGNI 65
2007 (other notable essays): “Florence of Paterson” by Garret Keizer, from AGNI 64
2007 (other notable essays): “Spectacular Mistakes” by Wendy Rawlings, from AGNI 64
2007 (other notable essays): “Of Emptiness, Nothingness, and Asymptotic Freedom” by Christopher Livaccari, from AGNI 63
2007 (other notable essays): “Blessing the New Moon” by A. P. Miller, from AGNI 63
2007 (other notable essays): “A Study in Sequins” by Ben Miller, from AGNI 63
2006 (other notable essays): “Romancing the Dankerts” by Ben Miller, from AGNI 61
2005 (other notable essays): “Glaciology” by Lia Purpura, from AGNI 60
2005 (other notable essays): “Domains” by Donald Hall, from AGNI 59
2004 (other notable essays): “Message from Room 101” by George Scialabba, from AGNI 57

The Best American Nonrequired Reading

2011: “Homing” by Henrietta Rose-Innes, from The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction (AGNI 72)
2011: “The Boys’ School, or The News from Spain” by Joan Wickersham (AGNI 72)
2010 (“Notable Nonrequired Reading”): “things we’ll need for the coming difficulties” by Valerie Vogrin, from AGNI 69
2007: “Humpies” by Mattox Roesch (his first published story), from AGNI Online
2007 (“Notable Nonrequired Reading”): “What Gets Buried” (essay) by Betsy Johnson-Miller, from AGNI Online
2004 (“Notable Nonrequired Reading”): “A Cup of Coffee in the Café on Ostozhenka” (fiction) by Yevgeny Shklovsky, translated by John Mason and Byron Lindsey, from AGNI 58

The Best American Travel Writing

2011 (“Notable Travel Writing”): “The Knife Handler” by Phyllis Barber, from AGNI 71
2010: “Walking: An Essay on Writing” by Peter LaSalle, from AGNI 70
2005 (“Notable Travel Writing”): “Truth in Oxiana” by Tom Bissell, from AGNI 60
2004 (“Notable Travel Writing”): “Metaphysical Messages: With J. L. B. in Buenos Aires” by Peter LaSalle, from AGNI 58

The Best Creative Nonfiction

2009: “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium” by Marie Mutsuki Mockett, from AGNI 65

The Best New Poets

2017: “From the Lost Letters to Matias Perez, Aeronaut” by Andres Rojas, from AGNI 85
2010: “The Moon Speaks of Polar Bears” by Hailey Leithauser, from AGNI Online
2008: “Traveling by Train” by Malachi Black, from AGNI Online
2006: “Dry Lake, Nevada, 1983” by Autumn Eve Watts, from AGNI Online
2005: “The Fly” by Paula Bohince, from AGNI 59

The Best of the Web

2010: “Instructional Ghazal” by David Welch, from AGNI Online
2009: “The World As You Left It” by Helen Wickes, from AGNI Online

The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize

“My Best Soldier” by Ha Jin, from AGNI 33

The O. Henry Prize Stories

2016: “A Simple Composition” by Shruti Swamy, from AGNI 81
2006 (Recommended Stories): “Crackers” by Charles Haverty, from AGNI 60
2002 (Short-listed): “The Sugar Tit” by Carolyn Cooke, from AGNI 53
2002: “The Lives of Strangers” (story) by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from AGNI 53
1999: “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, from AGNI 47

New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best

2010: “Caiman” by Bret Anthony Johnston, from AGNI 69

The EastOver Anthology of Rural Stories: Writers of Color

2023: “Like None Other” by Jamie Figueroa, from AGNI 93

Other awards

Top Ten Online Stories (The storySouth Million Writers Award)

2008: “The Whale Hunter” by Steinur Bell
2007: “Do Not Hate Them Very Much” by Matthew M. Quick
2006: “A Letter from Home” by E. C. Osondu
2005: “Light at the End of the Tunnel” by John J. Clayton
2004: “Bone on Bone” by Jai Clare

The Caine Prize for African Writing

2007 (finalist): “Jimmy Carter’s Eyes” by E. C. Osondu