New Writing on Granta.com

‘The intensity of it seemed in retrospect something inexplicable, like a sudden opening in the sky with an outpouring of visions.’ Mary Gaitskill on her experiences with Pneuma therapy.

Essays & Memoir|The Online Edition

Universal Mother

Momtaza Mehri

‘I turn to O’Connor’s music when I get tired of lying to myself. Her songs are allegorical free-falls. Spiritual chiaroscuros, even.’

Momtaza Mehri on Sinéad O’Connor.

Literature Without Literature

Christian Lorentzen

‘Corporate publishing is the channel through which literature happens to flow at this moment in history.’ Christian Lorentzen dissects the literary establishment.

Diane

Avigayl Sharp

‘I lied about my age and I lied about my location and I lied about being horny.’ Fiction by Avigayl Sharp.

Bitter North

Alexandra Tanner

‘Eight years in, Hal felt like another her, somehow.’ Fiction by Alexandra Tanner.

Granta 168: Significant Other

The Pneuma Illusion

Mary Gaitskill

‘The intensity of it seemed in retrospect something inexplicable, like a sudden opening in the sky with an outpouring of visions.’

Mary Gaitskill on her experiences with Pneuma therapy.

The Museum Guard

J.M. Coetzee

‘Do they strike people as a strange couple? He does not know, does not care.’

Fiction by J.M. Coetzee.

A Journey to Ayodhya

Snigdha Poonam

‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’

Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.

‘The invisible artist who invites us to stand beside him is clearly among friends; being kind, being of a kind; witnessing with-ness.’

Jesse Glazzard photographs Camp Trans, with an introduction by Anthony Vahni Capildeo.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 168

Literature Without Literature

Christian Lorentzen

‘Corporate publishing is the channel through which literature happens to flow at this moment in history.’

Christian Lorentzen dissects the literary establishment.

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.

From the Archive

Fiction | Issue 91

The Great Wall

Ismail Kadare

‘What China loses by the sword it retakes by silk.’

A short story by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 41

Dreams for Hire

Gabriel García Márquez

‘The wave had erupted with such force that it obliterated the glass lobby.‘

A short story by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Nick Caistor.

Fiction | Issue 80

Soft Core

Joyce Carol Oates

‘They were two sisters of youthful middle age with three breasts between them and a history that might be summed up as much left unsaid.’

Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates.