Over There | Various Contributors | Granta Magazine

Over There

Various Contributors

Americans, speaking of foreign lands, often say, 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.'

Tom Bissell

Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia (2003) and Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010).

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George Bowater

George Bowater is writing a book about Turkey.

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Gardner Botsford

Gardner Botsford (1917-2004) was a distinguished editor at the New Yorker for almost forty years. During the Second World War he served with the First US Infantry Division.

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Paula Fox

Paula Fox’s memoir, Borrowed Finery, is published by Vintage in the UK and Henry Holt in the US.

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Nell Freudenberger

Nell Freudenberger is the author of a novel, The Dissident, and Lucky Girls, a collection of stories both published by Picador in the UK and the Ecco Press in the US. She was one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. She lives in New York.

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Paul Fussell

Paul Fussell’s most recent book is The Boy’s Crusade: The American Infantry in Northwestern Europe, 1944–1945.

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Charles Glass

Charles Glass has been a regular visitor to Syria since 1973. His books on the Middle East include Tribes with Flags: A Journey Curtailed, The Northern Front and Syria Burning. He was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993.  

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Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges has been a war correspondent for nearly twenty years, covering Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. He is the author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

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Adam Hochschild

Adam Hochschild’s most recent book is Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery.

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Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson is the author of The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, published by Metropolitan Books in the US and Verso in the UK.

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Murad Kalam

Murad Kalam’s first novel, Night Journey, is published by Simon & Schuster in the US. He lives in Washington DC.

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J. Robert Lennon

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Jacki Lyden

Jacki Lyden is a host and correspondent for National Public Radio. She is the author of Daughter of the Queen of Sheba (Virago/Penguin).

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Todd McEwen

Todd McEwen was born in California in 1953 and graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1975. He worked in broadcasting, theatre and the rare book trade before settling in Scotland in 1981. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, novelist Lucy Ellman. Several of his stories have been published by Granta magazine. This is his fourth novel. Todd McEwen was born in California in 1953 and graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1975. He worked in broadcasting, theatre and the rare book trade before settling in Scotland in 1981. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, novelist Lucy Ellman. Several of his stories have been published by Granta magazine. This is his fourth novel.

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Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney (b. 1953) is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

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Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness (Allen Lane/Houghton Mifflin). He has also written two plays, Americans and We the People.

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Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and moved to the United States with his family seven years later. His first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. It was also named a New York Times Notable Book, a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly, and a Best Debut of the Year by the Guardian. His second novel, Absurdistan, has sold over 40,000 copies in the UK. The New York Times Book Review named it one of 'The Top 10 Books of 2006'. His most recent novel Super Sad True Love Story was published by Granta in 2010. It won the Salon Book Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Bestseller, and was the first book by an American author to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. Gary's fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine. In 2010 he was selected as one of the New Yorker's '20 under 40'. He lives in Manhattan with his Dachshund.

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Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) is the author of ‘Pounding a Nail’, which appeared in Granta 90, taken from And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey, (Granta Books, 2006). He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.

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Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is the author of around thirty novels and short story collections, as well as sixteen works of non-fiction. His latest book is A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta (2009).

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Joel Turnipseed

Joel Turnipseed is the author of Baghdad Express: A Gulf War Memoir (Penguin). He writes a magazine column about the Asian board game, Go.

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