''AGNI'' is an American
literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letter ...
founded in 1972 that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, interviews, and artwork twice a year in print and weekly online from its home at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...
. Its coeditors are
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other tec ...
and William Pierce.
History and background
''AGNI'' was founded in 1972 at
Antioch College
Antioch College is a private liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1850 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1852 as a non-sectarian institution; politician and education reformer Horace Mann was its f ...
by former undergraduate
Askold Melnyczuk
Askold Melnyczuk (born December 12, 1954) is an American writer whose publications include novels, essays, poems, memoir, and translations. Among his works are the novels ''What Is Told, Ambassador of the Dead, House of Widows'' and ''Excerpt fr ...
. After a brief residency in New Jersey, ''AGNI'' moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Sharon Dunn joined Melnyczuk as co-editor in 1977. From 1980 to 1987 Dunn was the magazine's editor, first in Cambridge, then for three years in Western Massachusetts. In fall of 1987 Melnyczuk resumed editorship, and ''AGNI'' relocated to Boston University, later moving into the former offices of ''
The Partisan Review
''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated John ...
'' at 236
Bay State Road
The Boston University housing system is the 2nd-largest of any private university in the United States, with 76% of the undergraduate population living on campus. On-campus housing at BU is an unusually diverse melange, ranging from individual 19t ...
. In July 2002
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other tec ...
assumed the editorship, and after fifteen years as senior editor, William Pierce joined Birkerts as coeditor in 2019. The magazine receives support from the
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts & Sciences (CAS), which includes the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GRS), is the largest school at Boston University, offering Bachelor of Arts degrees in over 20 departments and 25 interdisciplinary programs, including th ...
. In addition, ''AGNI'' relies on funding from the
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
, the Mass Cultural Council, and individual donors.
''AGNI'' publishes two 240-page print issues annually. Each issue includes thirty to forty contributors, with a minimum print run of 2,500. ''AGNI'' has subscribers across the United States and in many other countries. It is carried by university and public libraries, and is distributed to independent and chain bookstores within the U.S. and Canada. ''AGNI Online,'' an electronic extension of the print magazine, features new writing each week: reviews, blog posts, and interviews, as well as a small selection of each print issue's stories, poems, and essays. ''AGNI'' has featured writers from Afghanistan, Mexico, Uganda, South Africa, India, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Egypt, Russia, Nigeria, Djibouti, The Gambia, Syria, Botswana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Brazil, and many other countries, along with translations from Urdu, Dutch, Latin, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Greek and ancient Greek, Hebrew, Albanian, Old English, Polish, Italian, Slovenian, French, Latvian, and more.
According to the magazine's website, “At AGNI we see literature and the arts as integral to the broad, engaged conversation that underwrites a vital society. Our poets, storytellers, essayists, translators, and artists lift a mirror to nature and the social world. They not only reflect our age, they respond.”
The magazine's name comes from
Agni
Agni (English: , sa, अग्नि, translit=Agni) is a Sanskrit word meaning fire and connotes the Vedic fire deity of Hinduism. He is also the guardian deity of the southeast direction and is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu ...
, the Vedic god of fire and guardian of mankind. ''AGNI’s'' symbol, the flying monkey, was originally conceived of by
Erin Belieu, the magazine's managing editor at the time of its redesign, beginning with ''AGNI 40,'' and ''AGNI'' interns Richard Curtis and John Mulligan. It has been used since to represent the magazine.
Awards and contributors
Melnyczuk received the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing in 2001 for his work with ''AGNI.'' This biennial award “honors a magazine editor whose high literary standards and tastes have, throughout his or her career, contributed significantly to the excellence of the publication he or she edits.”
AGNI Online: Awards Received by ''AGNI'' In the text of the award, PEN wrote:
"
'AGNI''has become a beacon of international literary culture.... Among readers around the world, ''AGNI'' is known for publishing important new writers early in their careers, many of them translated into English for the first time."
Six AGNI writers have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of them,
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. , wrote that ''AGNI'' is “a reader’s delight, a standard achieved, a balance held between service to new writers and fidelity to what’s what in writing itself.”
Other prominent writers who have debuted work of note in ''AGNI'' include
Jhumpa Lahiri
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" LahiriMinzesheimer, Bob ''USA Today'', August 19, 2003. Retrieved on 2008-04-13. (born July 11, 1967) is an American author known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italia ...
,
Ha Jin
Jin Xuefei (; born February 21, 1956) is a Chinese-American poet and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin (). ''Ha'' comes from his favorite city, Harbin. His poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement.
Early life
Ha Jin was born in ...
,
Mark Doty
Mark Doty (born August 10, 1953) is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work ''My Alexandria.'' He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.
Early life
Mark Doty was born in Maryville, Tennessee to Lawrence an ...
,
Susanna Kaysen,
Glyn Maxwell
Glyn Maxwell (born 1962) is a British poet, playwright, novelist, librettist, and lecturer.
Early life
Of primarily Welsh heritage — his mother Buddug-Mair Powell (b. 1928) acted in the original stage show of Dylan Thomas's ''Under Milk Wood'' ...
,
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts (born 21 September 1951) is an American essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his book ''The Gutenberg Elegies'' (1994), which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other tec ...
,
Olena Kalytiak Davis
Olena Kalytiak Davis (born September 16, 1963) is a Ukrainian-American poet.
Davis is the author of five poetry collections, her most recent being ''Late Summer Ode''. Her collection ''The Poem She Didn't Write And Other Poems'' (2014, Copper C ...
,
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...
,
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
,
Russell Banks
Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...
, Brock Clarke,
E. C. Osondu, and
Cynthia Huntington
Cynthia Huntington is an American poet, memoirist and a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. In 2004 she was named Poet Laureate of New Hampshire.
Life and career
Huntington has published numerous books of poetry, incl ...
. Work first published in ''AGNI'' has been reprinted in
The Pushcart Prize
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...
anthologies, ''The Best American Short Stories'', ''The Best American Poetry'', ''The Best American Essays'', ''The Best American Nonrequired Reading'', ''The Best American Travel Writing'', ''The Best New Poets'', ''
Harper's'', ''The
O. Henry Prize Stories'', ''Utne Reader'', ''Poetry Daily'', and ''The Best Spiritual Writing''.
A list of contributors to the current issue can be found a
''AGNI Online''
Submissions
''AGNI'' reads submissions from September 1 to May 31 of each year. Writers can send their work by mail or submit it through the website. The magazine's guidelines allow simultaneous submissions; ''AGNI'' sponsors no contests.
''AGNI Online''
''AGNI'' launched its online supplement in 2003 as an extension of the print journal. It posts new writing weekly. The website hosts more than 110,000 visitors (distinct hosts) per year.
''AGNI'' and Boston
''AGNI'' holds several public events each year in the
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
area. The new print issues are released with biannual events on the Boston University campus.
AGNI Online: News & Events
See also
*List of literary magazines
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
References
External links
''AGNI'' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agni (Magazine)
Biannual magazines published in the United States
Boston University
Literary magazines published in the United States
Magazines established in 1972
Magazines published in Boston