AGNI 89 Launch

Tuesday, April 30, 2019, at 7:00 p.m.

BU’s Pardee School of Global Studies, 120 Bay State Road, Boston (Green Line, Kenmore Station)

AGNI celebrates its EIGHTY-NINTH issue with readings by:

> Jonathan Escoffery: Prizewinning author of “If I Survive You” (AGNI 89); stories forthcoming in The Paris Review and elsewhere

> Julia Shipley: Author of the poetry collection The Academy of Hay; finalist for the Vermont Book Award

> Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé: Fiction writer with stories in Kweli Journal (Nigeria) and Gulf Coast; finalist for Graywolf’s Africa Prize.

> Kelle Groom: Author of four poetry collections and a memoir chosen for Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers

Plus a performance by local singer-songwriter ZENOBIA.  Our release party follows. The spring issue features stories by Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé, Grace Singh Smith, David Hayden, Jonathan Escoffery, & Ivana Bodrozić (translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać); poems by Sharon Olds, Julia Shipley, Cyrus Cassells, & Shauna Barbosa; essays by Jo Ann Beard & Kelle Groom; a portfolio by artist Wosene Worke Kosrof; and more.

Jonathan Escoffery’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, The Caribbean Writer, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. His most recent honors include a Distinguished Story citation in The Best American Short Stories, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and Passages North’s Waasnode Fiction Prize. This fall he will begin as a doctoral candidate in the University of Southern California’s Creative Writing and Literature program, as a Provost Fellow.

Julia Shipley is the author of a poetry collection, The Academy of Hay (Bona Fide Books, 2015), finalist for the Vermont Book Award, and Adam’s Mark: Writing from the Ox-House (Plowboy Press, 2014), named one of The Boston Globe’s Best Books about New England. Her work has also appeared in The Collagist, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review online, and Poetry. She lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His fiction has appeared in Kweli Journal and Gulf Coast and in anthologies within and outside Africa, including Behind the Shadows: Contemporary Stories by African and Asian Writers, edited by Rohini Chowdhury and Zukiswa Wanner. A past finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, he lives in Vermont, where he is completing an MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Spill (Anhinga Press, 2017) and Five Kingdoms (Anhinga, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry, and elsewhere. Groom’s memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2011), was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, and director of education programs at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Zenobia has shared a stage with Foo Fighters, Rachel Sage, Edie Carey, Mila Drumke, and the Dresden Dolls; collaborated with contemporary popular electronic and ambient music pioneer Roedelius; worked in studio with Counting Crows founding member Matt Mally; studied tabla and Hindustani classical voice in Kolkata, India; and performed at a wide range of venues/events solo, with a band, with a string section, with a choir, and with an orchestra.

Free and open to the public, and wheelchair accessible. For accessibility concerns or other questions, please contact Senior Editor William Pierce at agni@bu.edu or (617) 353-7135.