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Rishi Nath

Rishi Nath is a mathematician and writer. Originally from Boston, he lives in and writes about Jamaica Queens. Rishi is a former Open City Creative Nonfiction Fellow.

By Rishi Nath:
Exit West: An Interview with Ishmael Reed
Fact/Fiction
The Physics of Storytelling
Jah Guide Me Through
Always Foreign, Always Brown
The Talented Master Khan
Everything Is a Surface
Vish and Dev: Undocumented in Richmond Hill
Anatomy Of A Fuel Shortage: The Hess Station on Liberty Avenue in Queens
Land of The Beavers: A Conversation With Queens Historian Carl Ballenas
Scenes From Sandy: South Queens Recovers, Slowly
Queens Stand Up: The Essential Reading Guide on Hip-Hop’s Forgotten Borough
Ghetto Qu’ran: South Jamaica Through The Life Of 50 Cent
Bebi Rejendra, Student
The Neighborhood You Know Nothing About
Five Boroughs, Seven Killings

Recent Articles

  • Arms Crossed
    Poetry
    By Shareen K. Murayama

    shall god taste / the sick / bodies also / singing / also breaking

    Nine Picks from the Editors of the South Asian Avant-Garde
    By South Asian Avant-Garde

    Read these books by South Asian writers that wrestle with established forms, narratives, and structures.

    Still Life with Conch Shell
    Fiction
    By Jasmine Sawers

    In the shelter of our happiness, his shell shone brighter and brighter until one day, it split open and crumbled into dust to reveal a baby, golden skinned and blinking up at me.

    Trans Liberation Matters, Regardless of The Presidency
    Essays
    By Fei Lu

    Regardless of who is in the White House in 2021, Asian and Black trans women will not be ignored or silenced. Even with a Biden win, the fight is not over.

    The Old House in Sam Bat
    Essays
    By Katie Gee Salisbury

    I am no longer striving to understand something foreign, or to earn some measure of acceptance or belonging that I don’t deserve. I am here, simply, to see the land that my family came from, to know that we have been here before.

    My Mother’s Story, Vol. 2 Chapter 6
    Fiction
    By Eun Sung Kim, Julie Moon

    Since the new government promised land reform, the have-nots in your father’s village buckled over with joy, while the landed were bewildered

    Ode to Gatorade…
    Poetry
    By Paul Asta

    When I look back, I think about all the times Gatorade has let me down in my life.

    A Radiant Home
    Fiction
    By Meghna Rao

    She was a prisoner in this home, where death and decay had collected like a fog.

    Blood Memory
    Essays
    By Elisabeth Sherman

    Paragraph by paragraph I am piecing together the story of my Indonesian family—their trauma and struggle against colonial rule—alongside my dad.

    three sorry prayers
    Poetry
    By Connie Ni Chiu

    we inherited sickly
 / roots our ancestors couldn’t plant / deep enough to
 / grow

    Dirty Kitchen
    Essays
    By Jill Damatac

    Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.

    The Best American Poetry 2020: Asian American Poets
    Video
    By The Asian American Writers’ Workshop

    Watch readings by ten poets from this year’s Best American Poetry anthology, edited by Paisley Rekdal

    非凡 (EXCEPTIONAL)
    Poetry
    By Michael Chang

    It’s funny how ppl were saying that the peaches in Parasite / were some serious motif & symbolism of prosperity’s toxicity

    An Aquatic History of My Family
    Fiction
    By K-Ming Chang

    There was a time, Abu says, before your great-grandmother, when water was blue because it was a bruise, when it could feel our hands like the skin of a fruit.

    Land: A Folio
    Essays
    By Joseph Lee

    Land holds so much of our history and memory—both personal and collective. In this special folio, seven writers investigate and explore Asian relationships with land.

    Hello, doorknob
    Fiction
    By Jen Lue

    Sometimes she grew so nervous that she had to sit in her room for hours until her hands stopped trembling. She wondered if her daughters ever thought about her.

    The Sentence Called You
    Poetry
    By Eugene Mok, Mirae Yang

    I stow away the sentences in which there is no you in my drawer right after writing them I remember the time when I emptied the bottom of my drawer for you There I found stuff like a key that became useless forever

    We Lead The World’s Liberation: A Conversation with Sex Work Activists SX Noir And Kate Zen
    Interviews
    By Kate Zen, SX Noir

    “Sex worker activism is always based in anti-police, anti-prison activism.”

    Madison, WI 1968 (Before the Fall)
    Poetry
    By Cole Chang

    Left home at sixteen, said you wanted to go see the West. Grandpa didn’t stop / you. Figured you might die in some jungle across the Pacific.

    Seven Writers On the YA Fiction That Has Shaped Their Work
    By Traci Chee, Hafsah Faizal, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, Adiba Jaigirdar, Ed Lin, Abdi Nazemian, Emily X.R. Pan

    From tender coming-of-age and coming-out stories to eye-opening historical fiction & unforgettable fantasy

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