The Launch of AGNI 100

Join us for the IN-PERSON launch of the new fall issue—our hundredth!

Monday, October 28th, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston

Register to attend IN PERSON: agni100.eventbrite.com

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AGNI celebrates its ONE HUNDREDTH issue with readings by

• Elisa Gabbert: Author of 7 collections of poetry, essays, and criticism; “a fiercely democratic thinker, incapable of snobbery and brimming with curiosity” (Becca Rothfeld).
• Maggie Dietz: Former director of The Favorite Poem Project; her poems have been described as “welcome elements in a noisy and crowded world” (Rosanna Warren).
• Lynette Ng: Malaysian-born poet based in Boston; author of work published in Beloit Poetry Journal, Hanging Loose, AGNI, and elsewhere.
• Aidan Rooney: Translator of Emmelie Prophète’s novel Cécé, heralded by Dany Laferrière as “the best book on Haiti in a very long time.” Cécé was first excerpted in AGNI.

The evening will also feature a live musical performance by Gabriella Simpkins—and our release party afterward!

AGNI’s one hundredth issue presents fiction by Colin Winnette, Monique Schwitter (in Susan Bernofsky’s translation), and Xueyi Zhou; nonfiction by Wiam El-Tamami, Anna Badkhen, and Elvis Bego; poems by Rick Barot, Paisley Rekdal, Kim Hyesoon (in Cindy Juyoung Ok’s translation), Kevin Prufer, and DeeSoul Carson; and much more. Cover artist Chitra Ganesh sets the tone, with a subversive and playful visual rendering of Rokeya Hossain’s 1905 feminist utopian classic “Sultana’s Dream.”

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More on the featured readers & performer appearing at the October 28th launch:

Elisa Gabbert is the author of seven collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently Any Person Is the Only Self (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). Her other books include Normal Distance (Soft Skull, 2022), The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays (FSG, 2020), and The Word Pretty (Black Ocean, 2018). She writes the On Poetry column for The New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Believer, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Providence.

Maggie Dietz’s third book of poems, If You Would Let Me, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2026. She is also the author of That Kind of Happy (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Perennial Fall (Chicago, 2006) and co-editor of three anthologies related to her longtime work on The Favorite Poem Project. Recent poems appear in The Adroit Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Bennington Review, and Salmagundi. She is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Lynette Ng is a card-carrying union member who enjoys pasta, picket lines, and public libraries. Her poems have been published in AGNI, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Hanging Loose, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Malaysia.

Aidan Rooney’s translations of poetry from Haitian Kreyòl and French can be read at Vox Populi, AGNI, and Tanbou, as well as in print in New American Writing #39. Cécé—Aidan’s translation from the French of Emmelie Prophète’s latest novel, Les Villages de Dieu, heralded by Dany Laferrière as “the best book on Haiti in a very long time”—will appear in spring 2025 from Archipelago Books. He is also the author of the poetry collections Go There (Madhat Press, 2020), Tightrope (The Gallery Press, 2007), and Day Release (The Gallery Press, 2000). Rooney grew up in Monaghan, Ireland, and has been a teacher and coach since 1988 at Thayer Academy in Massachusetts.

Gabriella Simpkins is a singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist from Cape Cod, whose music lies at the intersections of folk, classical, jazz, and indie rock. She began playing the flute at age nine. By thirteen, she was writing songs and arranging pieces by ear for chamber wind ensembles. She later taught herself to play the guitar and started accompanying her intimate, introspective songs with a guitar style that brings comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake. She regularly performs at venues such as Club Passim, the Hard Rock Café, and MVY Radio. Additionally, she teaches and tutors in music theory and songwriting, is beginning work as a freelance film composer and session musician, and is recording her debut album. She is an inaugural member of Club Passim’s Folk Collective, a cohort of artists and thinkers committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the folk genre.

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Free and open to the public! Contact us for accessibility or other questions: agni [at] bu.edu

Monday, October 28, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern
IN-PERSON
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215

Register: agni100.eventbrite.com