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AGNI
A literary magazine named after the Vedic god of fire
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Submit to AGNI

Reading period
Reading period
September 1st - May 31st
Response time
Response time
Two to four months
Submission methods
Submission methods
Electronic and postal
Simultaneous submissions
Simultaneous submissions
Accepted
Word limit
Word limit
No hard-and-fast length limit

We look for writing that catches experience before the crusts of habit form—poetry and prose that resist ideas about what a certain kind of writing “should do.” We seek out writers who tell their truths in their own words and convince us as we read that we’ve found something no one else could have written.

When to submit#when-to-submit

Our online submission portal is open from September 1st through May 31st, with a monthlong break from 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on December 15th through January 15th. We welcome manuscripts by mail between September 1st and May 31st. (Submissions mailed to us in June, July, or August will be returned unread, provided sufficient return postage is included.)

Things to know when submitting#things-to-know-when-submitting

  • Nearly everything we publish is unsolicited.
  • We encourage submissions from writers of all identities, living anywhere, published and unpublished.
  • We will not consider writing that has already been published in English, whether in a book, magazine, newspaper, or on an app, a website, a social media feed, or a publicly accessible online community.
  • We consider only work written in English or translated into English.
  • We require submissions to be the writer’s or translator’s own work, and must be told up front, in your cover letter, if any element was written in collaboration with others, taken from found materials, or developed using any computer algorithm or artificial intelligence.
  • We are interested in personal essays, think-pieces, memoir, free verse, blank verse, visual poetry, prose poems, shaped or concrete poems, formal or structured poetry, short stories, and short shorts; we do not publish academic essays or purely journalistic writing.
  • We do not publish genre romance, horror, mystery, or science fiction; however, we are open to writing that borrows elements from any of these.
  • We will consider excerpts if they read as if they were meant to stand alone.
  • We have no word limits, though space is at a premium and length sometimes affects our decisions.
  • You can familiarize yourself with the magazine by ordering a recent print issue or perusing the writing that appears here at AGNI Online, which includes selected pieces from our decades in print, along with everything we’ve ever published exclusively online. The AGNI blog features posts by writers who have appeared previously in AGNI or AGNI Online.
  • Each submission in the main genres—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid—costs $3 when sent through our online portal. (Subfolio will briefly redirect you to Boston University’s secure payment page.) Reading fees help us remunerate the editors who spend time with your work. To avoid paying a fee, please see “Sending by paper mail” below. If both options pose a difficulty, please contact us, specifying your genre.

Some requests#some-requests

  • Do not ever email your work; we will not read or consider emailed submissions.
  • Please send one story, one essay, or up to five poems at a time, and please submit only once during our September-to-May reading period.
  • Please do not submit revisions of work we’ve already considered.
  • Please do not query us about your submission until four months have passed. We work hard to respond within two, but we’re not always able. If you submit online, you can log in anytime to check status. “Received” means your work is under consideration.

Paper submissions#paper-submissions

If you’d rather not submit through the online portal, please address your envelope to Fiction Editor, Poetry Editor, or Nonfiction Editor and mail to:

AGNI Magazine
Boston University
236 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215

There is no fee for work sent on paper. Please note that regular post is fine; there’s no advantage to using a faster or more expensive service.

  • Do not mail your work in the months of June, July, or August.
  • If you want us to reply by mail, please enclose a stamped, addressed envelope (SAE). If the envelope is large enough and you include sufficient postage, we will take reasonable efforts to return the manuscript; otherwise, it will be recycled. If you’d like to be notified by email instead, please include your email address and skip the SAE.
  • Do not send your only copy; we cannot accept responsibility for your manuscript.

How to withdraw#how-to-withdraw

You are welcome to submit the same work to other magazines simultaneously. If any part of your submission is accepted elsewhere, it’s essential to withdraw it from our consideration as soon as possible. ONLINE SUBMITTERS: Log in to your Subfolio account and click “Open” to the right of the submission. On the next screen, click “Revoke Submission” to withdraw fully, or “Add Comment” to let us know which subset needs to be withdrawn. PAPER SUBMITTERS ONLY: Contact us with a brief withdrawal note.

Payments and rights#payments-and-rights

All submissions are considered for both print and online publication. (Blog publication is limited to writers whose work has previously appeared in AGNI or AGNI Online.)

We buy first worldwide serial rights and pay $30 per printed (or printed-out) page for accepted prose, and $50 per page for accepted poetry (50% more in each category for translations), up to a maximum of $300. We also give a year’s subscription to AGNI. In the case of print publication, each contributor receives two copies of the issue their work appears in, and we send up to four additional copies to friends or family.

In all cases, copyright remains with the author.

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