Granta | The Home of New Writing

Of Bankers and Soldiers

Ode to Cristina Morales

Cristina Morales

‘She who says knockout, who says tap-out, speaks the words of glory.’

Fiction by Cristina Morales, translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn.

Court Sketcher

Hatty Nestor

How do court sketch artists influence our sympathies?

Ladies! Be Your Own Grave

Emily Skillings

‘the slightly annoying and toxic / first green of spring’

A poem by Emily Skillings.

In Conversation

Patrik Svensson & Rebecca Tamás

‘I want to pull the emergency brake’

The authors discuss anger, attention and noticing the nonhuman.

Ten Thousand Steps

Rupert Tebb

Winner of the 2021 Disquiet Prize for Fiction.

The Coming Bad Days

Sarah Bernstein

‘I began to appreciate being amongst things that were mine only. I cleaned with a puritanical zeal.’

An excerpt from Sarah Bernstein’s debut novel, The Coming Bad Days.

On ‘Colville’

Natalie Diaz

The author of Postcolonial Love Poem on ‘Colville’, the photoessay by Fergus Thomas.

Four Poems

Geoffrey Nutter

Four poems by Geoffrey Nutter.

Uwaa: the sound of the feeling that cannot be spoken

Polly Barton

An excerpt from Fifty Sounds, a memoir by Polly Barton, translator of Aoko Matsuda and Kikuko Tsumura.

The Walker

Izumi Suzuki

A newly translated story from the late Japanese writer.

A Perfect Cemetery

Federico Falco

An excerpt from Federico Falco’s story collection A Perfect Cemetery.

Genealogy

Kayo Chingonyi

A new poem by Kayo Chingonyi from the forthcoming collection A Blood Condition.

Mould

Alice Ash

‘There was fur on the window frame, and we drew into it with our fingernails: dark, mushroomy bursts.’

A new essay by Alice Ash.

Crystals

Kate Lebo

‘Sam had a urate crystal in his toe, built by genes and rich eating.’

Kate Lebo on Xylitol.

The Mob and the Crowd

Noémi Lefebvre

‘The purveyors of legitimate violence are what matter above all’.

An excerpt from the novel Poetics of Work.

Three poems

Verity Spott

‘I’m better now, & time spreads away / across the flood.’

Three new poems from Verity Spott.

House of Flies

Claudia Durastanti

‘The disappointment only spread later, like an odorless gas seeping through the pipes, and the only complaints heard were from old people wandering around anxiously in the fog.’

Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris.

In Conversation

Katherine Angel & Sam Byers

‘I was experiencing a sort of muteness and inhibition, a need to burrow away and think, quietly, alone.’

Katherine Angel, author of Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again speaks to Sam Byers, author of Come Join Our Disease.

Lice

A. K. Blakemore

‘I often had head lice as a child. Outbreaks circulated around my primary school on a seasonal basis.’

A new essay from the author of The Manningtree Witches.

Clara’s Parrot

Hebe Uhart

‘He laughs with a human laugh, a sinister and forceful cackle.’

Newly translated work from the Argentine writer Hebe Uhart.

Two Poems

Khairani Barokka

‘a powerful blast ignited in their latest attempt to grow lives in the dirt of your online receipt, human blood carries all kinds of filigreed debris’

In Conversation

Jeremy Atherton Lin & Kevin Brazil

‘My larger concern is that as we sequester online, our lack of imagination threatens to foreclose our respect for other people’s realities.’

Selected

Sam Byers

‘Across the country, at any given moment lives are unravelling in rooms of crushing uniformity.’

Undreamed Shores

Frances Larson

‘Miss C (who is fairly young and pretty) can’t go off by herself with a solitary man, however respectable, to live on the Siberian tundra.’

from Affiliation

Mira Mattar

‘on our knees in bathrooms internationally / dependent on a disguise of sovereignty’

An Ounce of Gold and Máxima Acuña Atalaya

Joseph Zárate

‘To end up with an ounce of gold – enough to make a wedding ring – you need to extract fifty tonnes of earth, or the contents of forty removal lorries.’

On Vulnerability

Katherine Angel

‘Is anyone an authority on themselves, whether on their sexuality or anything else?’

An excerpt from Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again.

Two Poems

Wendy Xu

‘Somewhere in America a white boss / in a dandelion dress-shirt is raising / his voice again’

Fat Bodies

Forsyth Harmon

‘Justine was at my lab table, pulling at the ends of her black bob, shoving her hair into her mouth.’

An excerpt from Justine, out with Tin House Books.

In Conversation

Madeleine Watts & Lucie Elven

‘The moments of relief in this awful year that will stick with me are roaming around at strange hours, walking in the middle of the road.’

Three Poems

Najwan Darwish

‘I’m not dead yet / so why are the mourners here?’

Return

Niki Bañados

An excerpt from the graphic novel, Return, by Niki Bañados.

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘Perhaps in isolation a new form of communication is emerging, expressing what readers and writers have always told one another, via books and letters and on the literary stage: I hear you. You are not alone.’

Permafrost

Eva Baltasar

‘This never made sense to Roxanne, whose whole life was a treat.’

Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches.

I’ve Been Away for a While

Dan Shurley

‘When the world releases him from its oily grip will there still be a world?’