New Writing on Granta.com
In Conversation|The Online Edition
In Conversation
Amelia Abraham & Jack Parlett
‘It’s true that public sex and cruising can be complicated, but I still believe in the solidarity that a look can forge between people.’
Amelia Abraham and Jack Parlett discuss cruising, nostalgia and the privatisation of public sex.
Podcasts|Issue 166
Podcast | Brandon Taylor
Brandon Taylor
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’ In this episode, Brandon Taylor discusses naturalism and the future of fiction.
Art & Photography|The Online Edition
Interview
Teju Cole & Alice Zoo
‘Each successive image has to have the simultaneous feeling of being unanticipated and of being right.’ Teju Cole speaks to Alice Zoo about sequencing, portraiture, and the interplay between image and text.
Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition
A Flat Place
Noreen Masud
‘If all things were equal, what were we even doing here? Why weren’t we lying on our living-room floors, watching the dance of the dust, today and every day?’ Memoir by Noreen Masud.
Poetry|The Online Edition
Two Poems
Momtaza Mehri
‘Rub my scalp and tell me who I could have been. / Feed me a morsel or two.’ Two poems by Momtaza Mehri.
Granta 166: Generations
The Sensitivity Reader
Andrew O’Hagan
‘Human nature is not improved by concealment, especially when it comes to the past.’
A short story by Andrew O’Hagan.
Five O’Clock Somewhere
Gary Indiana
‘It’s when things fail to return to normal, that finally you get it: this is normal.’
Gary Indiana on growing older.
Lifetimes of the Soviet Union
Yuri Slezkine
‘Bolshevism, like most millenarian movements, proved a one-generation phenomenon.’
Yuri Slezkine on Soviet history and the generational arc of revolution.
Shooting Stars in Your Black Hair
Joanna Biggs & Jack Latham
‘To be in a hair salon is to be bubble-wrapped against the world – or at least that’s the fantasy.’
Joanna Biggs on salons, intimacy and the photography of Jack Latham.
Repetition
Vigdis Hjorth
‘The people she longed to be understood by, the ones at whom her anxious hope was pinned, were her parents.’
Fiction by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund.
Constructing a Nervous System
Margo Jefferson
Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize Book of the Year
In this intimate and innovative memoir, Pulitzer prize-winning author Margo Jefferson gives us her own personal and intellectual formation.
From Josephine Baker’s radiant transformations, to Willa Cather’s aesthetics of whiteness, Jefferson shows us how we can find space in cultures that will not make room for us, and how, even in times of stricture, we might learn to construct ourselves.
Highlights From Granta Books
Recommended Reading
My Time Machine
Arthur Asseraf
‘How do we imagine the past of those we love?’
Arthur Asseraf on family and fractured memories.
Last Week at Marienbad
Lauren Oyler
‘The only thing on the schedule was spa.’
Lauren Oyler on her trip to Marienbad.
Moving Nowhere Here
Kimberly Campanello
‘I am afraid to say we are all / progressing or regressing / down a more or less screwy road / found on a very old map / until / we are going Nowhere.’
A poem by Kimberly Campanello.
The Tupperware Party
Montserrat Roig
‘We’re going to go crazy today, Merche exclaimed and then let out an electric shriek.’
Fiction by Montserrat Roig, translated by Julia Sanches.
News, Prizes and Events
When I Sing, Mountains Dance and Chilean Poet Shortlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola (trans. Mara Faye Lethem) and Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra (trans. Megan McDowell) are both shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
Our Share of Night Shortlisted for The Kitschies
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell) is shortlisted for The Kitschies Red Tentacle award, awarded to speculative, sci-fi and fantasy novels.
I’m A Fan Wins a British Book Award
I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel wins the Book of the Year: Discover Award at the British Book Awards.