Adi Magazine

Almost Nothing I Wrote Exists - Adi Magazine One morning in the spring of 2019, I disappeared a little. I was at home in Havana, having coffee and googling my name as if I were flipping through a

"You don’t need to burn books when you can edit the metadata."

There's a new essay up today on the Adi site by Jesús Jank Curbelo entitled "Almost Nothing I Wrote Exists." Curbelo writes about censorship in Cuba and the fragility of digital archives.

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/alm...

front cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with bw photo of boats (trace, 2025).

back cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with description & names of contributors. (trace, 2025)

Thanks to all who attended recent TO & online events for #TamilTerrains! An excerpt from Nedra Rodrigo's essay is up at @adimagazine.bsky.social & poems translated by Subhanya Sivajothy & Yalini Jothilingam are on @alllitupcanada.bsky.social poetry blog.

Islands in the Sky - Adi Magazine As some of the oldest creatures on land, it makes sense that spiders are often part of our origin stories.

“Everywhere I go, spiders seem to find me. If not spiders then their webs, clingy strings meant to capture prey or capture your attention.”

Read Ashia S. Ajani's essay “Islands in the Sky” in @adimagazine.bsky.social! #BlackHistoryMonth adimagazine.com/articles/isl...

An image of Adi Magazine's new website home page, with the words "Adi Magazine, rehumanizing policy" at the top. The design showcases six of the latest pieces and illustrations Adi has published against a tan background.

Surprise! Adi has a new website 💜🧡 we're so pleased to share our new site is up and running, with new colors, better search navigation, and a design that better showcases our amazing contributors and illustrators.

Go check out our latest pieces at adimagazine.com!

River Humanism Taking a walk near home, no one expects to find a dead man in a corn field. When my neighbor here in Northern California did, he called 911 first and then uploaded the corpse’s photo to our housing co...

New essay alert! Check out @torsa.bsky.social's essay, "River Humanism," which meditates on bauls, wandering musicians from West Bengal, India, and Bangladesh, and their philosophy of movement.

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/riv...

Again: Crossing the Mangrove How do we return to the same texts for inspiration, for teaching? Such returns, at times, feel tedious. I will admit that even when not engaged in revisiting texts, I'm often bored, making rereads eve...

The second installment of Adi's new "Again" column is live today! Myriam J. A. Chancy reflects on the book "Crossing the Mangrove" by Maryse Condé!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/aga...

"...we lingered on those moments where the literary text acts as an archive of a cultural, historical, or artisanal experience. To translate them with a reverence for the archive seemed to be a form of resistance against the monolithic identities we are compelled to occupy in diaspora."

To Translate is to Resist I could not enter the practice of translation feigning ignorance of the myriad ways in which translation has served as a tool of surveillance, categorization, and suppression. As much as translation h...

We're thrilled to share the essay "To Translate is to Resist" by Nedra Rodrigo, excerpted from TAMIL TERRAINS (@tracepress.bsky.social, November 2025) with artwork by Kaya Joan!

Read here: adimagazine.com/articles/to-...

Two upcoming free events in the next weeks! Join us on Zoom for:

➡️ On the Politics of Translation: 1/20/26 @ 5 PM ET, ft. Chenxin Jiang, Alaa Alqaisi, Nedra Rodrigo, & Heather Cleary!

➡️ Again Book Club: The Wretched of the Earth: 2/3/26 @ 7 PM ET!

REGISTER: www.eventbrite.com/o/adi-magazi...

i suppose this is the aftershock, some things have always been / flammable

Marta’s Blues Already, she was in a mood. The surly guard didn’t help.  “You people are always late,” he barked.  And you people are always rude, Marta thought, knowing better than to say it, not to a thick-n...

"Already, she was in a mood. The surly guard didn’t help. “You people are always late,” he barked. And you people are always rude, Marta thought, knowing better than to say it."

New fiction by Sara Campos is out today!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/mar...

The Women’s Anaphora grab ‘em by the pussygrab the last speck of butter when he’s lookinggrab the keys, the telfar, the travel spraygrab your grandmother’s voice, promise it redemptiongrab the umbilical cord and braid it ...

"grab your own hand for no reason at all / grab history by the collar, before it flushes down the toilet"

A new poem by Shams Alkamil, "The Women's Anaphora" is live today on the Adi site! Art by Candice Evers

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/the...

EVENT ALERT! We're thrilled to have a virtual panel, "On the Politics of Translation" upcoming on January 20, 2026, featuring Chenxin Jiang, Alaa Alqaisi, Nedra Rodrigo, and Heather Cleary!

Join us on 1/20/26 at 5 PM ET!

Free sign-ups: www.eventbrite.com/e/on-the-pol...

I have gone mad before, so I am not afraid i long for this ordinary apocalypse, my hands still as i kneadflour, wet with oil, as i watch the yeast rise asit wants for water,there are children outside playing in the asphalt, they arethrowing me...

"i have dreamt it before, this terrible reckoning, this gaping..."

Adi's first publication of the year is here! Asmaa Jama's poem "I have gone mad before, so I am not afraid" is live today, with art by Kaya Joan.

Read here: adimagazine.com/articles/i-h...

My last poem to share for 2025 is the first poem in "Beauty Talk" which comes out next fall with @noemipress.bsky.social! Thank you so much to Ladan Osman and Genevieve Hartman for including this poem in this month's curation!

I am the only person who can tell the story / of my departure

A little bit late to sharing this, but Adi is so proud to have nominated the following wonderful writers for a Pushcart Prize earlier this month.

Congrats to Rania Mamoun, Alaa Alqaisi, Sharon Aruparayil, Tarfa Benson, @jezzbah.bsky.social, and Malak Hijazi!

What Migration Will Do To You This is the most she has ever said about the year she left. (I pointto what I can’t say.) And, to complete the story she reminds me, this is the mostshe’s ever told me. This December, she ...

"This country / doesn't exist for me without the story / of how we come to it."

We're so pleased to share our last piece of the year, Asa Drake (@asaldrake.bsky.social)'s gorgeous poem "What Migration Will Do to You!"

Art by Jinhwa Jang.

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/wha...

Again: The Wretched of the Earth This essay marks the beginning of a new column for Adi Magazine called

NEW COLUMN ALERT!

The Again column provides a space reflect on a text the author returns to again and again, and we're thrilled that Adi's publisher Nimmi Gowrinathan kicked us off with Frantz Fanon in "Again: The Wretched of the Earth."

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/aga...

Ghazal for the Dispossessed Republics There are names they never let bloom: not in maps, not in marrow—cartographies erased by teeth, tongues chewed into hollow.My grandfather spat fire in a dialect they jailed. He taught meto write freed...

"There are names they never let bloom: not in maps, not in marrow— / cartographies erased by teeth, tongues chewed into hollow."

There's a new poem, "Ghazal for the Dispossessed Republics" by Avril Shakira Villar on the Adi site! Art by Larissa Ribeiro.

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/gha...

On Making Work into Play: Leila Chatti on Wildness Before Something Sublime In Winter 2022, I was lucky enough to be part of Leila Chatti’s Tin House workshop for poetry. At the end of our one-on-one session, she told me she wasn’t sure if she could conceive of a book for her...

among all of the beautiful debuts i had the pleasure of spending time with, I also had the privilege of talking to @leilachatti.bsky.social about her second full-length (and one of my favorite books of the year!) WILDNESS BEFORE SOMETHING SUBLIME, for @adimagazine.bsky.social

The River of Birds He who leaves, takes his memory,  his way of being river, of being air,  of being goodbye and never. Love, Rosario Castellanos When Josefa heard that bird camouflaged among the trunks, she reme...

"When Josefa heard that bird camouflaged among the trunks, she remembered when mother had run away from home."

New fiction, "The River of Birds" by Quya Reyna, translated by Andree Michelle Viladegut Peñaranda is live today on Adi's website!

Read: adimagazine.com/articles/the...

Islands in the Sky Everywhere I go, spiders seem to find me. If not spiders then their webs, clingy strings meant to capture prey or capture your attention. Something about spiders’ craftiness, their art of living, the ...

"As some of the oldest creatures on land, it makes sense that spiders are often part of our origin stories."

A new essay, "Islands in the Sky" by Ashia S. Ajani, is live today on the Adi website!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/isl...

Dawn and Her Brother’s Ghost The ghosts have learned how to whistle. You can hear their lips pressed into the cracks of the floorboards. The sound reminds you of when you would pin a blade of grass between your baby thumbs and…

“The ghosts have learned how to whistle. You can hear their lips pressed into the cracks of the floorboards.”

Read “Dawn and Her Brother’s Ghost” by Jess Masi in @adimagazine.bsky.social this #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth! adimagazine.com/articles/daw...

And So I Roar: Abi Daré on Storytelling, Survival, and the Climate Crisis in Nigeria In Lagos, the rains don’t just arrive; they declare themselves. Sheets of water pour from the sky drumming on rooftops, spilling into streets, folding traffic into a slow-moving blur. For many Nigeria...

"I resist the idea that writing about suffering and imagining new worlds are separate things. Often they happen together."

New interview today with Abi Daré and Kehinde Adepetun on Daré's award-winning novel AND SO I ROAR!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/and...

Bridge Gringo

"There is an age-old question about who came first: the River or the People? The answer you get depends on who you ask."

Innocent Chizaram Ilo's short story "Bridge Gringo" is live on the Adi site today, with stunning art by our new illustrator, Jinhwa Jang!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/bri...

Asterism In the forest of our quarrels lies the future

Were we an echo of an invented people
who left in our wake as we fled from each other
belts of precious metals, pigment, spice…

Read Jennifer Elise Foerster’s poem “Asterism” in @adimagazine.bsky.social! #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth adimagazine.com/articles/ast...

Queer Ecology While admiring the bounty of tomatoes in Q and M’s garden,we’re visited by crows. There are two, which makes it a murder.Q says that’s sick, sick itself a word inverted like a dogbelly-up in the grass...

"What a wonder, what a word, almost wander,
as in through a luminous forest of dreams, almost window,
a sly peephole into forever..."

Natalie Wee's poem "Queer Ecology" is up on the Adi site this week, with art by Herikita!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/que...

Ten Days in the Tall Trees Water called out to meeach mouth a lush bluegarden, window, a warning:The rooftop is the worst.Sight is nothing but an opportunityto become the mountain’sbruised heads disru...

"Language is where I grew less
small light streaming through the gaps
between my fingers..."

New poetry up today on the Adi website! We're thrilled to share Ezza Ahmed's "Ten Days in the Tall Trees," with art by Larissa Ribeiro!

READ: adimagazine.com/articles/ten...

"Before history is crystallized in textbooks, it is lived and made out of small steps. Some of those steps are bound to be in the wrong direction. Still, all of them matter."
(Carolina Simionato)

Loved reading this essay 😍