Photograph © Jane Thorburn
Here Deborah Levy spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about why as she wants to resist anything resembling a comfort zone and why writing fiction is about ‘finding reasons to live’.
Photograph © Jane Thorburn
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Deborah Levy is a British playwright, novelist and poet. She is the author of six novels, Beautiful Mutants (1986); Swallowing Geography (1993); The Unloved (1994); Billy & Girl (1996); and Swimming Home (2011), which was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize as well as the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013), which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her latest novel, Hot Milk, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.
More about the author →Ted Hodgkinson is the previous online editor at Granta. He was a judge for the 2012 Costa Book Awards’ poetry prize, announced earlier this year. He managed the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, the affiliated Gregor Von Rezzori Literary Prize and still serves as an advisor. His stories have appeared in Notes from the Underground and The Mays and his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He has an MA in English from Oxford and an MFA from Columbia.
More about the author →‘Her husband who is going to betray her is standing inside the city of Roma.’ Dreams of infidelity from Deborah Levy.
‘Three grown-up children visit the country they were born in for the first time in twenty-three years’.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘It occurs to me then that he has not invited me for dinner, but my alter ego from the page.’
Tabitha Lasley on writing and dating.
‘What strikes me most, though, is how writers and climbers share an appetite for failure.’
Natasha Calder on bouldering.
‘They say it takes a village to raise a child and the same can be true of killing.’
Amber Husain on meat.
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