Agata was born and raised in Poland. She came to the U.S. as an MFA student and graduated with a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina. Her publications include an award-winning memoir, The Hunger Book, scholarly books on 20th-century literature, as well as essays and short stories in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Contrary Magazine, River Poets Journal, Entropy, Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, and Wabash Magazine. She is the winner of the 2022 Gournay Prize and the 2019 Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Prize. The Hunger Book has been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

​Agata lives in Indiana, where she teaches at Wabash College and volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate. She is the founder of Immigrant Allies.