The Launch of AGNI 101

Join us for the VIRTUAL LAUNCH of the new spring issue, AGNI 101!

Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. EDT

Register to join ON ZOOM: https://agni101.eventbrite.com

AGNI celebrates its ONE HUNDRED FIRST issue with readings by

Kazim Ali: In more than twenty volumes of poetry, novels, essay collections, and cross-genre texts, Ali “confronts philosophical quandaries capable of leading readers into their own reveries of the sublime” (Publisher’s Weekly).
Rosebud Ben-Oni: The author of several collections, including If This Is the Age We End Discovery (Alice James Books, 2021), a finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry.
Debra Nystrom: Nystrom’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Conjunctions, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her essay in AGNI 101, “Burning Ring,” is part of a memoir-in-progress.
Xueyi Zhou: Born and raised in Foushan, China, Zhou’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Waxwing, The Best Small Fictions 2022, and other publications.

The evening will also feature a musical performance by Matt Yurdana and George Estreich from Mule on Fire.

More on the featured readers & performers:

Kazim Ali’s books include poetry, fiction, essay, and cross-genre work. He has also edited several critical volumes and anthologies, most recently New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (Red Hen Press, 2021), and translated books by Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Mahmoud Chokrollahi, and Ananda Devi. Before his academic career he worked in public policy and organizing. He later danced with Cocoon Modern Dance and co-founded and was the first publisher of the independent press Nightboat Books. He is professor of literary arts at the University of California, San Diego.

Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections of poetry, including If This Is the Age We End Discovery (Alice James Book, 2021), which received the Alice James Award and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her work has appeared in Poetry, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. Her work has been commissioned by Paramount, the Smithsonian Channel, MTV, the National September 11th Memorial, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She has received grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts, Queens Arts Fund, Cafe Royal Foundation, Queens Council for the Arts, and CantoMundo.

Debra Nystrom is the author of four poetry collections: A Quarter Turn, Torn Sky, Bad River Road, and Night Sky Frequencies. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Conjunctions, AGNI, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She is on the faculty of the University of Virginia’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Xueyi Zhou’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Waxwing, AGNI, Passages North, Chestnut Review, Tahoma Lit Review, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, The Best Small Fictions 2022, and elsewhere. Her poetry has appeared in BOOTH (as runner-up for the 2022 Beyond the Margins Prize) and Frontier Poetry. Born and raised in Foshan, a city of manufacturing in Guangdong, China, she’s working toward her PhD in creative writing at the University of Utah, where she’s associate prose editor of Quarterly West.

Matt Yurdana (guitar, vocals) and George Estreich (guitars, mandolin, dobro) are one half of Mule on Fire, who bring their Northwest weave of blues, folk, jazz, and traditional music to stages in Portland and throughout the Willamette Valley. They’ve been the featured band at the Oregon Book Awards and the Portland Book Festival, as well as the house band for the Portland Lit Crawl event Poetry Karaoke. Their first album, River, featuring originals and Mulified covers, is available to stream on all major platforms.

Tuesday, April 29th, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. EDT

A virtual event, free to attend!

Registration required: https://agni101.eventbrite.com

Contact us for accessibility or other questions: agni [at] bu.edu