‘It is Friday, and I am at the airport waving a little flag, a one-man welcoming committee.’
It is Friday, and I am at the airport waving a little flag, a one-man welcoming committee. There is a name on the flag. I survey the arrivals, trying to put a face to the name. I do not have much to go on, just one telephone conversation.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘It comes as no surprise when an ophthalmist informs him that the tears he does produce–the consequence of various allergies–are deficient, poor-quality facsimiles of the real thing.’
'My nubile companion, assuredly no intellectual, continued to masturbate in front of me.'
‘We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldn’t believe we’d never done this before.’
Fiction by Miranda July.
‘What does that mean, vegan cheese? asks a lady who’d had no query about amuse-bouche.’
An extract from The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes.
‘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.
‘This was the collective trauma of a community discovering, very abruptly, they’d have to uproot their lives.’ Tim Beckett on the ruins of Uranium City.
