‘The terrain of literature is this space where you can pose these paradoxes of personal and political ethics’
Granta Magazine’s Josie Mitchell speaks to Anthony Marra about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists.
They discuss how he got his start in writing, paradoxes in literature and the (otherwise useless) qualities that make for a good author.
‘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.
‘Frank Laganà stood on the cliff suited in black, as straight as an exclamation point, poised to leap to his death once again.’
‘If a bar has a St Pauli flag, they know they will find reliably leftish people inside.’
Imogen West-Knights introduces Ilyes Griyeb’s photographs.
‘Without obsession, I don’t think I’d get anywhere.’
Two authors discuss atmosphere, obsession and going ‘too far’.
‘i think again, love, that t believe in this / would be t chapen the accident of our own gift’
Two poems from James Conor Patterson’s collection, bandit country.
Ntsika Kota is the winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa.
‘The Tanners are like mushrooms: born with every molecule / they’ll ever need.’
