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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

  • Self-Portrait as Contained Swarm
    Poetry
    By Emily Mitamura

    I read the flora and fauna in my home as uncannily resilient. / My ancestors’ bodies were presciently small. / Nests accommodate the needs of infestation. / I simply could not live in this house alone.

    Queering History, Archiving the Future: In Search of Taiwanese Lesbian History
    Essays
    By Eno Pei-Jean Chen 陳佩甄, Jeremy Tiang

    On the “impossible archive,” the historical and future queer imaginary of a “lesbian cultural archive” and Grandma’s Girlfriends 阿媽的女朋友

    Huang Hsiao-Ning, The Dashing Female Elvis
    Essays
    By Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association 「台灣同志諮詢熱線協會」, Jeremy Tiang

    It didn’t bother him that he attracted, and was attracted to, people of the same gender—all of this felt perfectly natural to him.

    Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature
    Essays
    By Ta-wei Chi 紀大偉, Ariel Chu

    An Introduction

    Flash Fiction Horoscopes
    Fiction
    By Swati Khurana

    Astrological insights from our twelve flash stories

    Kaixinguo
    Poetry
    By Rena Su

    in Chinese, pistachios are called / kaixinguo — happiness fruits. / but they are neither happy nor fruit. / they are birthed out of their shells / i am not happiness nor fruit nor mother; / only carefully extracted.

    Minding the Gap
    Fiction
    By Cindy Juyoung Ok

    I feel satisfied, triumphant, knowing I have loved the original donut well, though maybe it was only its glaze that I recognized.

    into the mountain
    Poetry
    By Niki Afsar

    and the woman in the mountain said /
    my head is full of rocks / my mouth, ears, nose full of sand

    Eulogy to be read from right to left
    Poetry
    By Janine Mogannam

    had partner My .Survival for /
    trip the for long hair their grown /
    —love make to nervous too was I and

    Two Poems by Adrian De Leon
    Poetry
    By Adrian De Leon

    once, / before the stars & stripes, / we traced stripes across / the stars to steer us / home.

    Two Poems by donia salem harhoor
    Poetry
    By donia salem harhoor

    you are prepared for all of it. how the blood will smell. of you. of lavender. of the crown of a head.

    Till We Meet Again in Spring
    Essays
    By Qais Kamran

    We reveled in the way our unlikely friendships disturbed the world around us. In each other’s bodies, we found joy and brotherhood.

    Influencer
    Fiction
    By Ghinwa Jawhari

    The sea’s sunlit hues, the model-like beach goers that crowd the snack bar, the fruit from the south that tastes of the earth—they are totally unremarkable to her.

    litany for sarah
    Poetry
    By Mejdulene B. Shomali

    to need sky / because you are sun / forgive forgive / the world is crueler / without you in it

    in the hiding
    Poetry
    By ’mad

    my mother gives love / through the severity of / past and future tragedies

    Goddess Triptych: Three Poems by Banah el Ghadbanah
    Poetry
    By Banah el Ghadbanah

    I kiss / you & the sands roam every valley to ride this / wind. I kiss you & suddenly we are home again

    [we/they]
    Poetry
    By Haru Matsuura

    [we/ ] bombed them, because [ /they] bombed us.
    a star falls on someone else’s city because it’s just a shooting star.

    Slow Death and Labored Breath: Listening To, Listening Through Inheritance
    Essays
    By Layla Zbinden

    The better half of her four decades of life were marked by the ebbs and flows of relapse and remission, either sick, or about to be. Remission is life with an asterisk; conditional.

    Forgotten Densities
    Fiction
    By Jemimah Wei

    I don’t know what to tell you except that children are cruel and her emails were hilarious.

    Moviegoer
    Fiction
    By Shiyam Galyon

    Years later, to my own surprise, I would recognize a strange person within myself. Had I known then how strange I was, what would I have done?

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