‘Even in fiction, a writer's job is to tell the truth’
Granta Magazine’s Josie Mitchell speaks to Claire Vaye Watkins about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists.
They discuss how a writer’s job is to tell the truth, how the internet affects different generations, and the narratives that lie behind American nation-building.
Claire Vaye Watkins’ novel Gold Fame Citrus is available now.
Read her story I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness in Granta 139:
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘He had a mind to surf through all crises and shortages and conflicts past and present.’
‘I think there will be lightning tonight; the air has that feel.’
‘The uncooperative cadence of the phrase my myspace page perfectly encapsulates the awkwardness of the early oughts when our story begins.’
‘It would be falsely modest to claim that I appreciate the hot dog on any level beneath that of connoisseur.’
A selection of Granta contributors discuss the books they read in 2012.
‘Drinking vodka is just a memory for me now. Vodka was hurting me.’
