Nonfiction
Nkechi Ebubedike, See-Saw (detail), featured in AGNI 104
Featured
What Obligation
In summer 2025 I was reading two very different books. One was Yáng Shuāng-zĭ’s novel Taiwan Travelogue, translated by Lin King—the English version has since won the International Booker. And the second was . . .
Bog Hag
Before she burned down her own house in protest and the courts sent her off to the state asylum, before her local newspaper discredited her published local histories as poetic romanticism, even before she sued . . .
Skin without Flesh
Stone, in labor, becomes fluid. Fluid, in time, becomes stone again. Limestone, heated to around 800°C, becomes quicklime; mixed with water, it becomes a soft, binding putty. Exposed to air, it slowly hardens . . .
Close Range
When I was twelve years old, I was pretty sure I had a handle on what was happening in the world, and it went like this: the United States was good, Afghanistan was good, Ronald Reagan was great, and the Soviet Union . . .
It and I
The community I was born into speaks a dialect of Kannada called Havyaka. They say it is closer to Haleygannada, or Old Kannada, implying that it is purer. Purity is an obsession in current India, and in . . .
Flower and Pot: A Note on Process
This story came together when two women, 2,700 miles apart, met day after day in a Google Doc. It started with a flower and pot. We passed paragraphs to each other without really knowing where the story was . . .
Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing
Nimble, protean, an adoptee has an awareness and creativity that converse with constellations, manifold possibilities unbound by known origins. This liminality risks oblivion. Yet to imagine ourselves inside this everywhere that may be nowhere is to stake and take up space—here, I am here—even after untranslated documents, deathly embraces, a roll of shaved dice. We are here—resplendent and alive.
From the Archive
Traveling in Bardo
Poetics of Islands
A Walk on Cape Cod
End Papers
Your mother has agreed to share a tombstone with your father. You receive the sketch in an unassuming email from your sister. The subject line reads “FW: #124-5487 layout attached” and you nearly delete it without opening.