AGNI (magazine)

"AGNI" is an American literary magazine and cultural magazine published at Boston University. Founded in 1972, the twice-a-year journal publishes fiction, poetry, essays, art, reviews and interviews.

According to the magazine's Web site: [http://www.bu.edu/agni/about/history/index.html] history Web page of the AGNI Web site, accessed February 1, 2007] :Literature for literature’s sake is not what AGNI is about. Rather, we see literature and the arts as part of a broad, ongoing cultural conversation that every society needs to remain vibrant and alive. What we print requires concentration and takes some time to digest, but it’s worth that time and effort

Issues often include work from eight or more languages, with translations from languages including Urdu, Dutch, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Hebrew, Italian, Slovene, Polish, French and Latvian. Special topics covered in the magazine include "Spirituality after Silicon Valley", "Social Control and the Arts", "George Packer’s School on a Garbage Pile", and a profile of Haiti’s school systems.

Each issue includes at 40 or more writers and artists. The circulation is 3,000.

The publication's name comes from "the ancient Vedic god of fire and guardian of mankind", according to the magazine's Web site. [ [http://www.bu.edu/agni/about/name/index.html] Web page titled "The name AGNI" at the AGNI Web site, accessed February 1, 2007] AGNI has had a flying monkey logo since 1994, the work of an undergraduate. [ [http://www.bu.edu/agni/about/monkey/index.html] "The Flying Monkey" Web page at the AGNI Web site, accessed February 1, 2007]

History

AGNI was founded at Antioch College by undergraduate Askold Melnyczuk, an undergraduate student who later became a writer. He created the magazine to be a vehicle for alternative news, visual arts, and literature, featuring the then-young generation of writers and visual artists.

After several years being edited by Sharon Dunn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the magazine became a private publication in Western Massachusetts.. In 1987 Melnyczuk took the magazine to Boston University, where he continued to edit it until July 2002. [ [http://www.bu.edu/agni/about/staff/bio-melnyczuk.html] Web page titled "Askold Melnyczuk" at the AGNI Web site, accessed February 1, 2007] Sven Birkerts is now editor. [ [http://www.bu.edu/agni/about/staff/index.html] Web page titled "Masthead" at the AGNI Web site, accessed February 1, 2007] The magazine is supported by the graduate Creative Writing Program.

Awards and recognition

The magazine has been recognized as a periodical publishing some of the best new poetry and fiction in the country: its work is regularly included in the annual Best American Poetry series and the O. Henry, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. "Among readers around the world, AGNI is known for publishing important new writers early in their careers," according to a statement from PEN America in 2001.

According to the magazine:

:AGNI has published Jhumpa Lahiri (Pulitzer Prize, 2000, for "Interpreter of Maladies"; the title story appeared in AGNI 47 in 1998), Ha Jin (National Book Award, 1999; many of his early poems and stories appeared in AGNI and he was a Featured Poet in 1989), and Susanna Kaysen ("Girl, Interrupted", first excerpted in AGNI in 1991), as well as Mark Doty, Glyn Maxwell, Sven Birkerts, and Olena Kalytiak Davis, whom we’ve printed alongside such luminaries as Seamus Heaney, Joyce Carol Oates, Derek Walcott, and many others.

Other writers who have appeared in AGNI include Russell Banks, Alice Mattison, Brock Clarke and Jacob M. Appel.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.bu.edu/agni/index.html] AGNI Web site