Art by Jin Suk
The Launch of AGNI 99
Join us for the VIRTUAL launch of the new spring issue!
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. EDT
A virtual event, free to attend!
Register to join ON ZOOM: agni99.eventbrite.com
AGNI celebrates its NINETY-NINTH issue with readings by
- Steven Archer: Fiction writer whose story “Burrowing Creatures” in AGNI 99 is his first publication.
- Ruth Awad: Lebanese-American poet and 2021 NEA fellow in poetry; recipient of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the Ohioana Book Award for Poetry for her collection Set to Music a Wildfire.
- Jonathan Diaz: Finalist for the Ninth Letter’s 2023 Literary Award in Poetry and, like Vanessa Mártir, part of this issue’s landmark portfolio described below.
- Vanessa Mártir: Founder of the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound movement; essayist whose work in AGNI 99 is a letter to her late Honduran-American mother.
- Marion Winik: Longtime commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead, awarded the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature and named a best book of the year by PBS NewsHour and The Star-Ledger.
- Isaam Zineh: Palestinian-American poet and author of Unceded Land, finalist for the Medal Provocateur, Housatonic Book Award, and Balcones Prize for Poetry.
The evening will also feature an interlude of live music by singer-songwriter Natalee.
The spring issue includes a major portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora writing, edited by AGNI’s associate poetry editor Esteban Rodríguez, AGNI assistant fiction editor Ben Black, and guest editor Jennifer De Leon—in addition to nonfiction by Lia Purpura and Qais Akbar Omar, fiction by Urvi Kumbhat and Aidan O’Brien, and poetry by Mosab Abu Toha, Daniel Borzutzky, and Mercè Rodoreda (in Rebecca Simpson’s translation). Cover art by Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Guatemala’s “accidental painter.”
More on the featured readers & performer appearing at the April 23rd launch:
Steven Archer’s fiction is forthcoming in The Superstition Review. An alumnus of the 2023 Tin House Autumn Workshop, he holds an MFA from the University of Central Florida and lives in Orlando. “Burrowing Creatures” is his first published story.
Ruth Awad, a Lebanese-American poet, is the author of Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017), winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, The Believer, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. The coeditor, with Rachel Mennies, of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2020), she has twice received the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellow in poetry.
Jonathan Diaz was a finalist for Ninth Letter’s 2023 Literary Award in Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Stonecoast Review, * * and EcoTheo Review. A PhD candidate in English at Baylor University, he lives in Texas with his wife, Abigail.
Vanessa Mártir is a queer, Bushwick, Brooklyn–raised, Afro-Indigenous artist, writer, editor, and educator. Her work has appeared in such places as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Aster(ix), The Rumpus, and Bitch, and has been anthologized in Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxane Gay, and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, edited by Aracelis Girmay. Recipient of the 2021 Letras Boricuas Fellowship, she founded the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound movement.
Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead (Counterpoint, 2019) and First Comes Love (Vintage, 1997). Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011. A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and People and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered for fifteen years.
Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist and author of Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022), finalist for the Medal Provocateur, Housatonic Book Award, and Balcones Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He lives and benefits from being a settler on Paskestikweya land.
Natalee’s sound has been influenced by her experience singing jazz, classical, and many other styles. She graduated from Boston University in 2019 with a vocal performance degree, after studying classical voice at Baltimore School for the Arts. She has performed on many stages in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area as well as in New York at the Metropolitan Room and at the Live from The Secret Place concert with Victory Boyd. As a songwriter, Natalee mixes lyrics, rhythm, and melody in ways that recall the poetic line-busting known as enjambment.
Contact us for accessibility or other questions.
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. EDT
A virtual event, free to attend!
Registration required: agni99.eventbrite.com
By the AGNI staff.