Art takes over in the newest issue of AGNI (103). Paintings by Danielle Mckinney put the thinking self among canvases and books, prefiguring essays by Christie Hodgen, John Cotter, and Mairead Small Staid. In poetry, Victoria Chang and Phillip B. Williams, and in fiction, Jan Carson and Andrew Zornoza speak a self’s truth through art, while poems by Hilda Hilst, (translated by Justin Greene), D. Nurkse, and Hayan Charara counter boggling visitations with the bulwark of language. In this issue’s introductory essay, Senior Editor Shuchi Saraswat resists numbness above all her Editor’s Note, “To Be in a Time Of War.” In nonfiction, May Teng and Ashaki M. Jackson, and in fiction, and Jane Morton and Charu Sinha find an answer in the telling, and the listening.

A full table of contents and several sample works from this print issue are available to read online alongside AGNI‘s unique online-only content, including poetry by Campbell McGrath and Jeff Whitney, “Rewriting the Script of Matrescence Memoir: A Conversation with Erica Stern” by Elizabeth Brogden, “’The Border Moves Through Us’: From Minneapolis, 2026′ blog post by agnimag, and “To Never Have Risked Our Lives: A Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing” with poetry, fiction, essays, and conversations coedited by Esteban Rodríguez, Jennifer De Leon, and Ben Black.

Editor William Pierce opens AGNI 102 with his thoughts on “Mattering,” starting with this thought: “There is a rift, in our troubled century, between imaginative writing and the various mainstream U.S. cultures. I get the sense from conversations, articles, and shifts in educational curricula that a growing contingent fears literature (why else would they work to restrict access?) and an even larger group dismisses it as irrelevant. Those reactions are nearly opposite, but together, they have me thinking about how literature matters. Can fiction, poetry, and essays be a meaningful force for truth? And how — considering that word imaginative — do they stand apart from the various modes of distraction and deception?”

AGNI 102 explores this through works related to crisis and talismans, with the threaded objects of Lia Purpura fronting an issue intent on noticing, holding, and putting forward. Siew Hii, Carl Phillips, and Denise Duhamel (in poetry) and Donald Quist and Rilla Askew (in nonfiction) confront the wiliness of false narrative. Stories by Scholastique Mukasonga (translated by Mark Polizzotti) and Niamh Mac Cabe, with poems by Megan Fernandes and Fereshteh Sari, trace the veins of complicity. And stories by Subhravanu Das and Reyumeh Ejue, with poems by Brenda Hillman, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, and Peter Balakian, discover honest, tenuous shelter.

AGNI 101 is inhabited by gravity and grace in counterpoise, from the cover and art feature by Palestinian painter Malak Mattar to the essays, poems, and stories, the inescapable world finds its match in soaring gestures of imagination. In fiction, the characters of Silja Liv Kelleris, Alp Türkol, and Haytham el-Wardany (trans. Katharine Halls) give terrible circumstances a powerful second shape. Speakers in poems by Kazim Ali, CooXooEii Black, Amy Beeder, Hera Naguib, and Robert Pinsky gaze unflinchingly to counter the sturdiest myths. And in essays, Graison Gill, Brandi Bird, and Angela Pelster — among many others — invite readers into truths more complicated than the surface suggests. Available for purchase in single issue and subscription, AGNI also publishes unique online content readers can access for free.

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The marks the world leaves. The 100th issue of AGNI exemplifies the engagement, nuance, and spirit that are AGNI’s trademark. As Editor William Pierce writes in the introductory essay, “This last year at the magazine has raised more questions about publishing and literature than any other since I started editing. About purpose and scope, meaning and place – about caring for community and actively recognizing how one’s own ideals can clash.” Pierce goes on to examine the role of literary magazines, belles lettres, “the tailings of New Criticism,” the question of merit, and “the radical act.”

This issue’s cover artist, Chitra Ganesh, welcomes readers with a playful visual rendering of “Sultana’s Dream,” a 1905 feminist utopian fiction by Rokeya Hossain. Inside, stories by Colin Winnette, Xueyi Zhou, and Monique Schwitter (translated by Susan Bernofsky) follow women’s subversion of the gaze, into places of throttled emotion. A bounty of poets, including Paisley Rekdal, J. P. Grasser, and janan alexandra, join the formal ingenuities of DeeSoul Carson, Danielle Pierrati, and others to reach a new intimacy with the past. And essayists Wiam El-Tamami, Elvis Bego, and Anna Badkhen bring a rigorous, compassionate seeing to their meditations on loss and conflict. All this and much more, including loads of online content not included in the print issue.

The newest issue of AGNI (99) focuses on the places that remain. Contributors struggle with displacement and “home,” belonging and having to establish, resisting and being able to simply be. Partly devoted to a major new portfolio of writing from the Central American and Mexican diasporas, AGNI 99 unites around bewilderment and the force of clarity—discovering how we landed here and acknowledging where we stand. Geography extends beyond the folio, in poems by Mosab Abu Toha and Mercè Rodoreda (trans. Rebecca Simpson); fiction by Steven Archer and Urvi Kumbhat; essays by Lia Purpura and Marion Winik; and more. Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Guatemala’s “accident painter,” sets the vivacity and tumble right in front of us, on the cover.

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Consequences. AGNI 98 fronts the world as we find it, parsing enigmas and celebrating the drive to engage necessary truths. This newest issue includes essays by Mara Naselli and Peter Balakian that take on misogyny and cultural suppression while poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Rochelle Hurt, jason b. crawford, and Sharon Olds probe the surprising energies of duress. Stories by Lucy Sweeney Byrne and Mylene Fernández Pintado (in Dick Cluster’s translation) test commitments to decisions made. Cover artist Eva Lundsager sets the tone, finding motion in landscapes at the edge.

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The tone for AGNI 97 is set by the opulent colors and imperiled undertones of cover (detail from Cemetary with Dog) and portfolio artist Salman Toor. Stories by Garielle Lutz, Via Bleidner, and Anna Badkhen put the seismograph to relationships and track the needle as it jumps. Essayist Kai Maristed assesses the loss and legacy of her enigmatic father, while Ishion Hutchinson shows how the close reading of a poem can open into a close reading of the complexities of history. Poems by Kwame Dawes, Nicole W. Lee, Danez Smith, and Tyler Mills construct tales, mythographies, and fabulisms that gesture toward another world: one that can and must be made from ours. All this and much more in the print edition, available for purchase by single copy or subscription. Readers can also find unique content at AGNI online as well as featured content from past issues.

The newest issue of AGNI continues the celebration of fifty years of publication, opening with William Pierce’s Editor’s Note “On the Fraught Subject of Value.” Co-editor Sven Birkerts and Founding Editor Askold Melnyczuk each contribute their own “Reflections at 50” essay, in addition to Fiction by Caren Beilin, Teju Cole, Jesus De La Torre, Tamas Dobozy, David Hayden, Emmelie Prophète, Ellen Wiese; Essays by Ariirau, George Estreich, Karl Kirchwey, Eileen Myles, Sofia Oumhani Benbahmed, Jessie van Eerden; Poetry by Kristina Andersson Bicher, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh, Michael Bazzett, Cyrus Cassells, Robert Cording, Daniela Danz, Diana Marie Delgado, Matt Donovan, Steven Espada Dawson, Chanda Feldman, Julien Gracq, Heo Nanseolheon, Mark Irwin, Preeti Kaur Rajpal, Wayne Koestenbaum, Janiru Liyanage, Alexa Luborsky, Oksana Maksymchuk, Corey Marks, Carol Muske-Dukes, Nicholas Pierce, Diane Seuss, Natalie Shapero, Elena Shvarts, Nomi Stone, Michael Torres, Tristan Tzara; and a retrospective art featuring images of agni/fire by Gerry Bergstein, Christopher Cozier, Katherine Jackson, Deepa Jayaraman, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Anne Neely, Rosamond Purcell and Anna Schuleit Haber with an essay by Associate Editor Shuchi Saraswat. Many works from the issue can be read in full on the publication’s website.

The newest issue of AGNI (95) opens with Editor’s Note, “Interiors,” by Sven Birkerts, in which he reflects upon a recent period of confinement and offers readers this thought, “Our particular period – where we are right now – feels too vast and unresolved to be called a phase. It is changing everyone, creating a new zeitgeist, and insuring that the fantasy of a return to former ways is just that. When it recedes from us, the scars will be visible.” I have personally always been a fan of scars, knowing they have stories to tell, and always hoping for a good one. In keeping with good stories to tell, this issue of AGNI is full to the brim, with Fiction by Linda Mannheim, David Moloney, Iheoma Nwachukwu, Lindsay Starck, Mariana Villas-Boas; Essays by Nin Andrews, Charley Burlock, Carrie Cogan, J. Martin Daughtry, Sarah Gorham, Kelle Groom, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Andrew Zubiri; Hybrid Form by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa translated from the Japanese Ryan Choi, Khairani Barokka; Poetry by Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí, Jacques J. Rancourt, Vasiliki Albedo, Emma Aylor, Emma Aylor, Jan Beatty, Don Bogen, Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick, Fleda Brown, Victoria Chang, Charlie Clark, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Mariela Dreyfus translated from the Spanish Carmen Giménez and zachary payne, Liza Flum, Kimiko Hahn, K. A. Hays, Nâzim Hikmet adapted Steve Kronen, Saba Keramati, Hailey Leithauser, Alejandro Lemus-Gomez, Chloe Martinez, Jenny Molberg, Yuliya Musakovska translated from the Ukrainian Olena Jennings and the author, Lynette Ng, D. Nurkse, Jacqueline Osherow, Catherine Pierce, Robert Pinsky, Ellen Rogers, Bruce Snider, Becky Thompson, Issam Zineh; and an Art Feature by Andrea Chung with commentary Shuchi Saraswat.