News and Events
The Launch of AGNI 100
On Monday, October 28th, at 7:00 p.m., we will release AGNI 100 with in-person readings by Elisa Gabbert, Maggie Dietz, Lynette Ng, and Aidan Rooney, plus a musical performance by Gabriella Simpkins. Our release party will follow. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. Free and open to the public, and accessible.
Past Events, 2024
The Launch of To Never Have Risked Our Lives: An AGNI Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing
On Thursday, May 16, AGNI released To Never Have Risked Our Lives, edited by Esteban Rodríguez, Jennifer De Leon, and Ben Black. This live, virtual event featured readings by contributors William Archila, Sara Borjas, Krista Timeus Cerezo, Alexandra Lytton Regalado, Vincent Antonio Rendoni, and Felicia Zamora. Hosted by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this virtual event can be seen here.
The Launch of AGNI 99
On Tuesday, April 23rd, we released AGNI 99, with live, virtual readings by Steven Archer, Ruth Awad, Jonathan Diaz, Vanessa Mártir, Marion Winik, and Issam Zineh, plus a musical performance by Natalee. Please look back for a recording of this virtual event.
2023 Events
The Launch of AGNI 98
On Wednesday, November 15th, we released AGNI 98 with Jennifer Haigh, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, D. Nurkse, and Mary O’Donoghue, plus a musical performance by Hazel Royer and Ira Klein. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. A recording of this live, in-person event can be seen here.
The Launch of Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing
On Thursday, October 12, AGNI released Afterlives, a portfolio edited by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Lee Herrick. Herrick emceed readings by contributors Eva Lin Fahey, Susan Ito, Greg Santos, and Jenny Heijun Wills. Hosted by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
The HYBRID Launch of AGNI 97
On Monday, April 24, we released AGNI 97 in a hybrid event with in-person and virtual readings by Danez Smith, Courtney Sender, Kai Maristed, Ishion Hutchinson, Kim Garcia, and Anna Mazhirov, plus a musical performance by Charles Coe. Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon St., Boston. A recording of this live, hybrid event can be seen here.
2022 Events
AGNI at 50: A Literary Celebration
On Friday, November 4, at 7:00 p.m. ET, WBUR and CitySpace presented a hybrid celebration of 50 years of AGNI. Three-time U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky will emcee this evening of readings and music, with performances by Jo Ann Beard, Caren Beilin, Victoria Chang, Teju Cole, Chanda Feldman, Robert Pinsky himself, and the Boston-based, cross-cultural music project Meridian 71, led by Giuseppe Paradiso. A recording of this major hybrid event can be seen here.
AGNI at San Francisco’s Lit Crawl
On October 22, at 8:00 p.m. PT, assistant fiction editor Ben Black hosted a further celebration of AGNI’s 50th, a reading featuring Bay Area contributors Marilyn Abildskov, Abby Caplin, David Goguen, and Shruti Swamy. Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore, 3036 24th St., San Francisco, CA.
For AGNI**’s 50th: A Roundtable of AGNI’s Chief Editors, from 1972 to Now**
On Monday, October 17, the chief editors of AGNI from its founding to the present held a roundtable on the history of the magazine and lit mags’ place in the wider literary ecology: founder Askold Melnyczuk, former editor Sharon Dunn, and coeditors Sven Birkerts and William Pierce, moderated by associate editor Shuchi Saraswat. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
For AGNI**’s 50th: Mary O’Donoghue in Conversation with Maurice Carlos Ruffin**
On Monday, September 19, senior fiction editor Mary O’Donoghue talked with novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin, whose fiction shocks realities into fabulisms. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
For AGNI**’s 50th: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs in Conversation with Kimiko Hahn**
On Monday, July 25, senior poetry editor Jennifer Kwon Dobbs met with Kimiko Hahn, whose poetry triangulates toward social justice with a keen focus on the multiple implications of our words. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
For AGNI**’s 50th: Julia Brown in Conversation with Sara Majka**
On Monday, June 20, editor-at-large Julia Brown engaged story-writer Sara Majka, a stylist with a gift for moving nonchalantly into bouts of surprise. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
For AGNI**’s 50th: Jessica Q. Stark in Conversation with Shangyang Fang**
On Monday, May 23, poetry editor Jessica Q. Stark sat with poet Shangyang Fang, whose unflinching lines fuse history, imagination, and indictment. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
The HYBRID Launch of AGNI 95
On Wednesday, May 11, we released AGNI 95 in a hybrid event with in person and virtual readings by Lynn Emanuel, Yasmine Ameli, David Moloney, Mariana Villas-Boas, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, and Andrew Zubiri, plus a musical performance by Julian Kytasty. Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon St., Boston. A recording of this live, hybrid event can be seen here.
For AGNI’s 50th: Sven Birkerts in Conversation with Joan Wickersham
On Monday, April 25, coeditor Sven Birkerts launched off our 50th anniversary virtual conversation series with National Book Award finalist Joan Wickersham, whose genre-switching books foreground exploration and language. Hosted by Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
2021 Events
The Launch of Futures: An AGNI Portfolio of Work in Translation
On Saturday, December 4, AGNI released Futures with translators E. J. Koh, Mui Poopoksakul, and Ruth Ward in conversation with portfolio coeditors Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Shuchi Saraswat. Hosted by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
The Launch of AGNI 94
On Wednesday, November 10, we released AGNI 94, with live virtual readings by Hussain Ahmed, Daniel Borzutzky, Melissa Chadburn, Marianne Chan, Shelley Frisch, Carmen Stephan, and Che Yeun, plus a musical performance by Ganavya. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
The Launch of AGNI 93
On Tuesday, May 11, we released AGNI 93 with Erin Adair-Hodges, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Rafael Campo, W. S. Di Piero, and Jamie Figueroa, plus a musical performance by Holland Hopson and a visit to the New Delhi studio of featured artist Deepa Jayaraman. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
2020 Events
The Launch of AGNI 92
- On Thursday, October 29, AGNI presented a roundtable conversation, The Vocation of Literary Editing. Two editors from AGNI (Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Mary O’Donoghue) hosted colleagues from Kenyon Review (Nicole Terez Dutton) and The Adroit Journal (Peter LaBerge) to discuss what it means to be a literary editor in 2020, and how the calling has changed even in the last year. As a follow-up, the editors took questions from the audience, including about the selection and editing processes at three different journals.
- On Thursday, October 22, AGNI featured poetry from the new fall issue and AGNI Online. Poetry editors Ruben Quesada and Jessica Q. Stark hosted a series of brief readings and conversations with Cyrus Cassells, Benjamin Garcia, torrin a. greathouse, Shara McCallum, and Vietnamese poet Tue Sy‘s English-language translators Martha Collins and Nguyen Ba Chung. The evening concluded with questions from the audience. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
- On Thursday, October 15, AGNI featured fiction and nonfiction from the new fall issue. Prose editors Julia Brown and Jennifer Alise Drew hosted a reading and conversation with story-writer Uzma Aslam Khan and essayist My Tran. After brief readings and a roundtable discussion, Uzma and My answered questions from the audience. A recording of this live, online event can be seen here.
The Launch of AGNI 91
Starting on Thursday, April 30th, we hosted an ongoing Virtual Launch to celebrate AGNI 91. It featured most of our editors and nearly every contributor to the new spring issue.
2019 Events
The Launch of AGNI 90
On Tuesday, October 29th, we released AGNI 90 with Erin O’Luanaigh, Lavinia Liang, Colin Channer, and Michelle Hoover, plus a musical performance by Ruby Rose Fox. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
The Launch of AGNI 89
On Tuesday, April 30th, we released AGNI 89 with Jonathan Escoffery, Julia Shipley, Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé, and Kelle Groom, plus a musical interlude by local songwriter Zenobia. Our release party followed. Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road, Boston.
AGNI at AWP
AGNI editors attended the AWP conference in Portland, March 27–30. We loved meeting you at our Bookfair table!
An Omnibus Off-site Poetry Reading at AWP Portland
On Thursday, March 28, AGNI joined 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Quarterly West for a poetry extravaganza. AGNI’s lineup featured Maggie Smith, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Edgar Kunz, William Archila, and Natalie Shapero! Reception followed at the Slide Inn in Portland.
2018 Events
The Launch of AGNI 88
On Tuesday, October 30th, we released AGNI 88 with Maisy Card, George Scialabba, Willa Carroll, and Ira Sadoff, plus a dulcimer interlude by local singer-songwriter Noelle Micarelli. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
Translation Now: Conversations on the Art of Literary Translation
On Friday and Saturday, September 28th and 29th, AGNI cosponsored, with the Boston University Translation Initiative and many other colleague organizations at BU, a two-day conference featuring more than twenty literary translators. Barristers Hall, Boston University. 765 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
Voices from the Edge of Europe: A Reading and Conversation with Albanian-born Writers Ani Gjika and Gazmend Kapllani
On Thursday, April 19th, AGNI, along with the Center for the Study of Europe and the Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking, hosted poet and translator Ani Gjika, author of the collection Bread on Running Waters and translator of Luljeta Llleshanaku’s Negative Space, and poet, journalist, and fiction writer Gazmend Kapllani, author of several novels, including A Short Border Handbook. A reception followed. Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road, 1st floor.
The Launch of AGNI 87
On Monday, April 23th, we released AGNI 87 with Krysten Hill, Bruce Willard, Kathleen Hill, and Michael Stein, plus a musical interlude by local singer-songwriter Audrey Harrer. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
Borders Now!: A Reading and Conversation with Bosnian Novelist Faruk Šehić and Translator Mirza Purić
On Tuesday, April 24th, AGNI, along with the Center for the Study of Europe and the Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking, hosts novelist Faruk Šehić, winner of the EU Prize for Literature and the Meša Selimović prize for the best novel published in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia, and Mirza Purić, translator, with Ellen Elias-Bursac, of Miljenko Jergovic’s story collection Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah. The conversation will be led by Stacy Mattingly. A reception followed at Boston University Photonics Center.
An Omnibus Off-site Poetry Reading at AWP Tampa
On Thursday, March 8, AGNI joined 32 Poems, Adroit, Denver Quarterly, and Quarterly West for a must-see, must-hear poetry extravaganza. AGNI ’s lineup features Hadara Bar-Nadav, Kai Carlson-Wee, Sumita Chakraborty, Cortney Lamar Charleston, and Paisley Rekdal. Jackson’s Bistro, 601 S. Harbour Island Boulevard, Tampa.
2017 Events
An AGNI Reading in the Roundtable Series
On Monday, November 6th, Porter Square Books hosted AGNI for a reading by Natalie Shapero, Brian Jerrold Koester, and Valerie Duff. During the year, the Roundtable series features AGNI, Post Road, Salamander, Redivider, and Harvard Review. Porter Square Shopping Center, 25 White St., Cambridge.
The Launch of AGNI 86
On Tuesday, October 24th, we release AGNI 86 with Liza Ward, Qais Akbar Omar, Perri Klass, and Richard D’Abate, plus a musical interlude by local singer-songwriter Nuda Veritas. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
A Celebration of AGNI at Newtonville Books
On Thursday, September 7th, the beloved independent bookstore hosts a reading by three members of AGNI ’s staff: poetry editor Sumita Chakraborty, one of Poetry’s new Lilly and Rosenberg Fellows; fiction editor Mary O’Donoghue, longlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award; and blog editor David Ebenbach, who will read from his new novel Miss Portland. Newtonville Books, 10 Langley Road, Newton Center, Massachusetts.
The Launch of AGNI 85
On Monday, April 24th, we released AGNI 85 with readings by Wen Stephenson, Kim Adrian, Noah Warren, and Courtney Sender, with a musical interlude by singer-songwriter Brian King of What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?. Our release party followed. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston.
Lusophone Voices: A Reading and Conversation with Portuguese Poet Rosa Alice Blanco
On Wednesday, April 19th, AGNI, along with the Center for the Study of Europe and Goethe-Institut Boston, hosted poet Rosa Alice Blanco, author of eleven collections and winner of the Espiral Maior Poetry Prize for best collection in Brazil, Portugal, Angola, and Galicia, for a conversation with her translator Alexis Levitan. A reception followed. Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road.
Irish Voices: A Reading and Conversation with Irish Poet Harry Clifton
On Tuesday, April 18th, AGNI, along with the Center for the Study of Europe and Goethe-Institut Boston, presented poet Harry Clifton, author of the collection Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994–2004 (2007), which won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Moderated by Meg Tyler. A reception followed. Boston University Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary’s Street.
A Q&A with Boston Lit Mag Editors in the Roundtable Series
On Monday, April 3rd, editors from AGNI, Harvard Review, Post Road, Redivider, Salamander, and other local journals answered questions and talked about their magazines. Moderated by Jenn Scheck-Kahn of Journal of the Month. Porter Square Books, Porter Square Shopping Center, 25 White St., Cambridge.
An Off-site Poetry Reading at AWP Washington
On Thursday, February 9, AGNI joins Pleiades, American Literary Review, Boulevard, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, and PoemoftheWeek.org for a reading alongside this year’s AWP conference.Matt Donovan represents AGNI in a lineup that also includes Chen Chen, Alice Elliott Dark, David Keplinger, Shara McCallum, Gregory Pardlo, Caitlin Pryor, Maggie Smith, and Ryo Yamaguchi. Bayou, 2519 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC.
AGNI News
2023
Diane Seuss’s poem “Ballad That Ends with Bitch” (AGNI 96) and Kai Carlson-Wee’s poem “Nomad Palindrome” (AGNI 94) have won Pushcart Prizes and appear in the 2024 anthology! Two pieces from AGNI received Special Mention: Robert Cording’s poem “Looking Around” (AGNI 96) and Janiru Liyanage’s poem “Ars Poetica” (AGNI 96).
Jamie Figueroa’s story “Like None Other” (AGNI 93) appears in the 2023 (and inaugural) EastOver Anthology of Rural Stories: Writers of Color.
2022
Isaac Yuen’s essay “Utter, Earth” (AGNI 94) has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in the 2023 anthology! Katherine Fallon’s story “Letting the Penguins Out” (AGNI 93) received Special Mention.
New collections by Sharon Olds, who first appeared in AGNI in 1982, and John Keene, who first appeared in AGNI in 1993, are finalists for the National Book Award, along with a collection by Roger Reeves, who talked with C. Francis Fisher for AGNI earlier this year. Sarah Booker, whose work was part of last year’s Futures: An AGNI Portfolio of Work in Translation, has a book on the finalist list also, in Translated Literature.
Jonathan Escoffery’s story “If I Survive You” (AGNI 89) became the title story of his new collection, longlisted for this year’s National Book Award.
2021
Cathryn Klusmeier’s essay “Gutted” (AGNI 91) has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in the 2022 anthology! Three pieces from AGNI received Special Mention: Chris Eagle’s story “Situation Cards” (AGNI 92), Jiaming Tang’s essay “Where Flowers Bloom but Have No Scent” (AGNI 91) and William Pierce’s essay “The Peculiarities of Literary Meaning” (AGNI 91).
2020
For release on December 16th, AGNI curated an issue in Mass Poetry’s series The Hard Work of Hope, featuring two poems from AGNI 91: Cynthia Manick’s “There Are No Unsacred Spaces” and Sasha West’s “The Long Emergency.”
Caryl Pagel writes about Angela Woodward’s “Dearth” (from the AGNI blog) for the December 6th feature at Essay Daily.
Elvis Bego’s essay “Ghost Museum” (AGNI 90) is reprinted in The Best American Essays 2020. Three other AGNI essays are cited as notable: Jodie Noel Vinson’s “Byron Was Here” (AGNI 90), Erica X Eisen’s “The Cracked and the Crazed” (AGNI 90), and coeditor Sven Birkerts’s “Losing, Finding, Improvising” (AGNI 89).
On November 25th, Literary Hub will feature the first section of Kirstin Allio’s story “Double-Check for Sleeping Children” from AGNI 92.
The 2021 Pushcart Prize anthology gives Special Mention to the last Stephen Dixon story to be published in his lifetime, “Tomorrow” (AGNI 90), along with Samuel Kolawole’s “Sweet sweet strawberry taste” (AGNI 89).
On June 4th, Literary Hub reprinted the opening of Jiaming Tang‘s essay “Where Flowers Bloom But Have No Scent” from AGNI 91.
On April 19th Three Quarks Daily, and April 22nd Arts & Letters Daily, featured coeditor Sven Birkerts’s AGNI Online review “The Examined Life: A Review of Howard Axelrod’s The Stars in Our Pockets.”
Sharon Olds’s poem “Hyacinth Aria” (AGNI 89) was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2020.
2019
On December 11th, Three Quarks Daily reprinted Clifford Thompson’s “Seventeen Notes on Singing” from AGNI Online.
On December 9th, Literary Hub reprinted Jodie Noel Vinson‘s “Byron Was Here,” from AGNI 90, under the title “95 Theses on Lord Byron, Graffiti, and Bathroom Stalls.”
The 2020 Pushcart Prize anthology gives Special Mention to Bonnie Friedman’s essay “Minding the Store” (AGNI 88).
Paisley Rekdal’s “Four Marys” (AGNI 87) was chosen for The Best American Poetry 2019.
In part two of our masthead announcement, we’re excited to say the full roster has been assembled. We’ve brought on three assistant poetry editors—Jenny George, Esteban Rodríguez, and Jessica Q. Stark—and three assistant fiction editors: Ben Black, Amber Caron, and Ariel Courage. A warm welcome to them, and to our readers: stay tuned…!
We’re proud to announce big changes to the AGNI masthead. Sven Birkerts and William Pierce, who’ve collaborated here for fifteen years, will now work side by side as co-editors. Then, centrally, six new genre editors have accepted invitations to join the magazine. Shuchi Saraswat comes on as nonfiction editor, alongside Jennifer Alise Drew, who has been instrumental at AGNI since 2003. Julia Brown and Emma Copley Eisenberg join as fiction editors, alongside Mary O’Donoghue, who switched in 2010 from publishing her work here to helping shape the magazine’s sensibility. And three new poetry editors further reorder the AGNI landscape: Paula Bohince, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, and Ruben Quesada.
We’ve re-opened our reviewing doors under the stewardship of Reviews Editor Rachel Mennies. We’re looking for roughly 1,500-to-3,000-word review essays that lift us to your singular inquiry-driven vantage.
As part of AGNI’s ongoing mission of publishing the most responsive and engaging work of our time, we are expanding and diversifying our editorial team, aiming to widen the journal’s masthead and add new perspectives. In the current phase (deadline August 14, 2019), we plan to bring on two new fiction editors, one new nonfiction editor, and three new poetry editors. See our call for applications.
Just days past the summer solstice, we have major changes to report! First, after thirteen years of direct editorial involvement—from the time she was a sophomore at Wellesley and a summer intern here—our poetry editor Sumita Chakraborty is stepping down as she becomes Helen Zell Visiting Professor of Poetry at University of Michigan. We’re pleased she’s staying with us as a contributing editor. David Ebenbach, who single-handedly founded the AGNI blog in 2015, is handing off his creation after four years of building it into a central part of our web presence. We are more than grateful for his energy and discernment. The hand-off goes to two AGNI contributors, Courtney Sender and Grace Singh Smith, who will pick up where David left off—they take over as joint blog editors starting August 1st. Finally, we’re delighted that Rachel Mennies, a longtime member of our team, will re-assume the position of reviews editor and begin to revive AGNI’s earlier commitment to powerfully engaged, long-form reviewing.
On May 31st, Literary Hub will feature the first four sections of Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé’s story “Sweet sweet strawberry taste” from AGNI 89.
2018
On December 10th, Literary Hub will feature Faruk Šehić’s story “Greta,” translated by Mirza Purić, from AGNI 88.
Jung Hae Chae’s essay “The Great Meal” (AGNI 86) has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in the 2019 anthology. The new edition gives Special Mention to Amber Caron’s story “Bending the Map” (AGNI 86), Stephen Dixon’s story “The Kiss” (AGNI 85), Lia Purpura’s essay “Walk with Snowy Things” (AGNI 85), and David Wojahn’s poem “Still Life: Stevens’s Wallet on a Key West Hotel Dresser” (AGNI 86)
We’re proud to be launching the new AGNI Online, a fully custom website containing thousands of pages of the best literary writing in English. Visit our About page to get some tips on how to use the new site!
On May 26th, Poetry Daily will feature Martin Edmunds’s poem “Perfect Match” from AGNI 87.
Ha Jin has joined AGNI’s Advisory Board. His writing first appeared in AGNI when he was a graduate student at Brandeis University. He has since published eight novels, six collections of poetry, four short story collections, and one book of essays, and has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway, the Flannery O’Connor Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner twice. We’re honored to formalize an already strong connection.
On May 14th, Literary Hub will feature Melanie Rae Thon’s story “Lover :” from AGNI 87.
2017
On November 22nd, Poetry Daily will feature David Wojahn’s poem “Still Life: Stevens’s Wallet on a Key West Hotel Dresser” (AGNI 86) and, as its prose feature for the week of December 18, Sven Birkerts’s introduction to AGNI 86, “Derek Walcott at BU: A Sorting.”
On November 22nd, Literary Hub will feature Sven Birkerts’s introduction to AGNI 86, “Derek Walcott at BU: A Sorting.”
Brian Morton’s story “Tolstoy and God” (AGNI 84) and Steve Stern’s story “The Plate-Spinner” (AGNI 83) have won Pushcart Prizes and appear in the 2018 anthology. The new edition gives Special Mention to James Cummins’s poem “Ode to a Mockingbird” (AGNI 83) and three AGNI stories: Emma Duffy-Comparone’s “Sacrifice” (AGNI 84), Tamas Dobozy’s “Four by Kline Caro” (AGNI 84), and Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s “The Children of New Orleans” (AGNI 83).
Carmen Maria Machado is a finalist for the National Book Award for her collection The Body and Other Parties! Her story “California Statutes Concerning Defrauding an Innkeeper” appeared in AGNI 79.
Philip Fried’s “The Quantum Mechanics of Everyday Life” (AGNI 85) is featured at Verse Daily.
Andres Rojas’s poem “From the Lost Letters to Matias Perez, Aeronaut” (AGNI 85) was selected for inclusion in The Best New Poets 2017.
On May 25th, Poetry Daily featured Kathleen Winter’s “Parthenon Marbles” from AGNI 85.
On May 11th our partner Literary Hub will reprint Qais Akbar Omar’s essay “In the Ring,” which appears in the new spring issue, AGNI 85.
We’re proud to announce that E. C. Osondu is our newest contributing editor, joining the likes of Dana Levin, Lia Purpura, and Tom Sleigh. E. C.’s first and second published stories appeared in AGNI in 2006. Three years later he won the Caine Prize for African Writing. He has gone on to publish the collection Voice of America and the novel This House Is Not for Sale, and in 2010 he coedited, with William Pierce, the AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction.
On March 22nd, our founder, Askold Melnyczuk, joined a conversation on the radio show On Point about the life and poetry of his friend, the late Derek Walcott.
Senior editor William Pierce talked about the magazine on the 167th episode of The How The Why, a half-hour podcast about “the evolution of the literary arts.”
Natasha Trethewey has chosen Cyrus Cassells’s poem “Elegy with a Gold Cradle” (AGNI 83) for The Best American Poetry 2017.
2016
On November 23rd, Poetry Daily featured Steve Kronen’s “Maker of Bowls” from AGNI 84, and on December 7th, Joseph J. Capista’s “The Telescope” from the same issue.
Stephen Kessler has won the 2016 PEN Center USA Translation Award for Luis Cernuda’s Forbidden Pleasures: New Selected Poems (Black Widow Press). The collection includes “The Family,” first published in AGNI 79.
Heather Abel’s story “Desire and Other Isms” (AGNI 82) is cited as distinguished in The Best American Short Stories 2016.
Shruti Swamy’s story “A Simple Composition” (AGNI 81) has won an O. Henry Prize and will be reprinted in the 2016 anthology The O. Henry Prize Stories.
On May 30th, AGNI author and former U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser featured Arden Levine’s poem “Offering” (AGNI Online) in his newspaper and online column “American Life in Poetry.”
On May 17th, Three Quarks Daily featured Tyler Mills’s blog post “Designing Time: The Idea of Plot in the Lyric Essay.”
On May 15th, Poetry Daily featured Kara van de Graaf’s “The Doubles” from AGNI 83.
Congratulations to Peter Balakian, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry! The winning collection, Ozone Journal, includes two poems first published in AGNI, “Near the Border” and “Slum Drummers.” Balakian’s work has appeared in the magazine more than a dozen times, starting in 1977.
On the last Thursday in April, the Bay Area bookstore Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts will feature Edgar Kunz’s “Window Washers” (AGNI 81) in its National Poem in Your Pocket Day celebration. A warm thanks to Mrs. Dalloway’s!
J. D. Daniels, who published work appeared in AGNI, has won the prestigious Whiting Award, given to “emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.”
2015
Kirun Kapur’s poem “Girls Girls Girls” (AGNI Online) has been selected for the 2015 Best of the Net anthology!
A new interview by our Sumita Chakraborty at LARB shows sides of AGNI poet Melissa Green that no one else has captured, with a sound and shape rare for author interviews. Five stars!
The 2016 Pushcart Prize anthology gives Special Mention to Tony Eprile’s story “City of Words” (AGNI 80), Ann Pancake’s story “Rockhounds” (AGNI 79), Judy Rowley’s essay “Light” (AGNI Online), Kevin Prufer’s poem “Monkey Lab” (AGNI 79), and Rebecca Black’s poem “The Bear” (AGNI 79).
On November 26th, Poetry Daily will feature Kathleen Graber’s “New Year” from AGNI 82.
Megan Mayhew Bergman’s story “Romaine Remains” (AGNI 79) is cited as distinguished in The Best American Short Stories 2015. In The Best American Essays 2015, K. E. Duffin’s “Castle Hill” (AGNI 80) and Carol Ann Davis’s “On Practice, School Buses, Hummingbirds, Rumi, and Being Led” (AGNI 79) are cited as notable.
On September 1st, David Ebenbach became the founder, curator, and primum mobile of the AGNI blog. The conversation is just beginning.
Apogee has reprinted an excerpt from Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s AGNI Online essay “Coming of Age in the Time of the Hoodie.”
On May 18th, Poetry Daily will feature Noah Warren’s “Automatic Pool Cleaner” from AGNI 81, and Verse Daily will feature Bern Mulvey’s “Cape Air” from AGNI Online.
On May 12th, Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s AGNI Online essay “Coming of Age in the Time of the Hoodie” was featured in Lithub Daily. In April, Literary Hub reprinted Jennifer S. Cheng’s essay “Hikimomori: Salt Constellations” (AGNI 81).
We’re thrilled to welcome Irish story writer and novelist Mary O’Donoghue as fiction editor, where she joins William Giraldi. After publishing three of O’Donoghue’s stories from 2004 to 2009, we invited her to join the staff as a reader. Now she will play a bigger, much-deserved role in guiding the magazine.
2014
Anna Journey’s essay “An Arrangement of Skin” (AGNI 79) is reprinted in the Winter 2014 issue of Utne Reader!
On December 6th, Poetry Daily will feature Mark Kraushaar’s “Matinee” from AGNI 80.
Rebecca Hazelton’s poem “Book of Forget” (AGNI 75) has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in the 2015 anthology. Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s essay “You Gotta Have Heart” (AGNI 77), Paul Christensen’s story “My Beautiful Life” (AGNI 77), and Selena Anderson’s story “Grief Bacon” (AGNI 78) receive Special Mention.
Two recent AGNI essays are cited as notable in The Best American Essays 2014: Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough’s “Europe, Europa” and Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s “You Gotta Have Heart,”both from AGNI 77.
We’re proud to add Patrick Modiano to the list of AGNI writers who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize! He joins Seamus Heaney (1995), Derek Walcott (1992), Wisława Szymborska(1996), J. M. G. Le Clezio (2008), and Tomas Tranströmer (2011). AGNI was the first to publish Modiano in English. We’ve also published two other winners of the Nobel during their lifetimes, after they’d won the prize: Odysseas Elytis (1979) and Joseph Brodsky (1987).
AGNI curated an issue of the iPad-based fiction magazine Paragraph Shorts. Our issue went live on September 25th, featuring Memory Sickness by Phong Nguyen (AGNI 63), Glass by Guilio Mozzi and translated by Elizabeth Harris (Online 2007), Cul-de-Sac by Edith Pearlman (AGNI 65), Things We’ll Need for the Coming Difficulties by Valerie Vogrin (AGNI 69), Clytemnestra by Gania Barlow (AGNI 62), As Though I Have A Right To by Victoria Lancelotta (AGNI 76), and Like God on a Sunday Morning by Bernard Farai Matambo (Online 2010, from The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction).
On June 4th, Poetry Daily featured Sarah Rose Nordgren’s “Mother, Pressed” from AGNI 79.
Congratulations to AGNI poet Charles Wright, named the next Poet Laureate of the United States!
The Best American Poetry 2014 reprints David Wojahn’s “My Father’s Soul Departing” (AGNI 76).
The Best American Short Stories 2014 cites Craig Davidson’s “Medium Tough” (AGNI 77) in its Distinguished Stories list.
