AGNI at 50: A Celebration

Held at WBUR CitySpace, Boston, November 4, 2022

WBUR and CitySpace presented a hybrid celebration of 50 years of AGNI—“a beacon of international literary culture” (PEN). Sanskrit for fire, AGNI ignites with writing that responds to each new now; the magazine has become an essential gathering place for those who feel literature’s power to nurture an authentic engagement with the world.

Three-time U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky emceed 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 complimentary catered reception with a cash bar followed:

Savory: La Fábrica Central, Cambridge
Sweet: Sueños Heirloom Chocolate, Watertown

More about Us
​​​​AGNI was founded in 1972 by Askold Melnyczuk, then an undergraduate at Antioch College with a vision for a countercultural space that would raise up imagination in response to a difficult present. More than ninety-five issues later, the editors have seen seven AGNI contributors go on to win the Nobel Prize. Fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews, blog posts, hybrid pieces, visual art—the print magazine, extended via AGNI Online since 2002, constitutes one of the most celebrated and vibrant nodes in contemporary literature.

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AGNI receives key support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mass Cultural Council, and a large roster of individual donors. The honorary cochairs for this event were Charles Coe and Cecily Miller. Event cosponsors included Brookline Booksmith, Harvard Book Store, Frugal Bookstore, Newtonville Books, Porter Square Books, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, The Black Scholar, Goethe-Institut Boston, Arrowsmith Press, Brattle Book Shop, Dogtown Books, and The Bookstore of Gloucester, along with many groups from AGNI’s home institution, Boston University—The College of Arts and Sciences, The Center for the Humanities, The Creative Writing Program, The BU Arts Initiative, The African American Studies Program, and The Center for the Study of Europe, the CAS D&I Office, the Core Curriculum, and the Office of the Associate Dean of Faculty, Humanities.