Granta | The Home of New Writing

Fertile Soil

A Ghost in Brazil

Kikuko Tsumura

‘I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.’

Podcast | Sophie Mackintosh

Sophie Mackintosh

‘Imagine if an alien came to earth and asked, so how to you reproduce?’

We discuss Blue Ticket and the body horror of motherhood.

Larger Than the Night

Masatsugu Ono

‘The night was sealed off completely – or so it seemed.’

The Only Way Out Is Through

Hana Pera Aoake

‘Hiding in kumara pits on the side of volcanoes, I was born with an egg inside me ready to be baked.’

Podcast | Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh

‘Unless you are completely shut down and in denial, there’s no way you’re getting out of this without having changed.’

Ottessa Moshfegh on 2020 and her new novel.

Four Poems

Bill Manhire

‘There is only one of me, she says, / but we all know there are two.’

Fossil Dinner

Daisy Lafarge

‘The poor dish looks just like me.’

On Meeting Margaret Busby

Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Margaret Busby was Britain’s first Black woman publisher. At the age of twenty, she was also one of its youngest.

Summer. Gates of the Body.

Galina Rymbu

‘I want to eat your rough hand that caresses me.’

Podcast | Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado

We discuss the dilemmas presented by her new memoir, In the Dream House.

‘What does it mean to present a face of one’s community that isn’t commonly seen, and that might be seen as bad PR?’

Girl Games

Makena Onjerika

‘There, behind glass panes separating you from the good children, from life itself, you are kept company by your dread.’

The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The hole felt as though it was exactly my size – a trap made just for me.’

Nocturne

Yūshō Takiguchi

Jesse Kirkwood’s translation of ‘Nocturne’ by Yūshō Takiguchi is the winner of the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.

Podcast | Momtaza Mehri

Momtaza Mehri

We discuss her collection, Doing the Most with the Least, on the Granta Podcast.

‘don’t be / shocked when I say I was in prison you’re still in prison that’s / what this land means prison.’

Selfish Little Thing

Olivia Rosenthall

‘I began to lie awake at night thinking about all the terrible things I’d ever done, listing them quietly in my head, each selfish little thing, my body numb with guilt.’

Podcast | Jenny Offill

Jenny Offill

We discuss her new book, Weather, on the Granta Podcast.

‘Yes, it's dire. Yes, we're not sure what to do. Does that mean we have nothing to do?’

Sleeping Beauty

Laura Demers

‘It’s normal not to be offered anything to eat or drink when you are a princess.’

Slobber and Drool

Jess Arndt

‘My face, not the glass, was blurry. I had no idea what I really looked like besides lumpy, fuzzy, profuse.’

It Was a Dog

Amaryllis Gacioppo

‘She liked to eat until her thighs felt gelatinous and slick with sweat, and her stomach ballooned out, sore and firm as though she had drunk cement that had now set.’

Two Poems

Aaron Fagan

‘it / Was chaos in the way nature is a chaos.’

Work, or the Swet Shop Boys

Hilary Plum

‘My work life – like, maybe, yours – is built around another, non-paying vocation.’

In Conversation

Katharina Volckmer & Eliza Clark

‘People are obsessed with authenticity – in a post-reality-TV, post-confessional-journalism world, fiction is simply not enough.’

Five Poems

Sawako Nakayasu

‘Although bara is homonymous with rose, this is not a rose-rose incident.’

Messrs. External & Bodily

Helen Marten

‘Space is marked and people do their best, but somewhere somebody made a false prophecy for the land.’

Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts

Bhanu Kapil

‘Every person who travelled here is unsteady, I can feel that.’

Four Poems

Ian Seed

‘We were afraid to touch it – it looked cold enough / to burn us.’

Cooking from Memory

Barclay Bram

Barclay Bram reports from Chengdu – on the attention to detail in Sichuanese cooking.

Ogadinma

Ukamaka Olisakwe

‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt. She only had to remember how long she had counted.’

Notes on Craft

Amina Cain

‘I would rather work in front of, or behind, a story. I want to leave a chain of images that remain in the reader’s mind.’

Roses

Legacy Russell

‘What if we are not ‘well-behaved’? What then?’

Legacy Russell on her father and the FBI.

Alphonse

Marie-Hélène Lafon

‘He was long and white; his hands especially were long and white, and he sewed; he looked after the linen; he worked as a woman would; he lived in the house; he didn’t speak, he was rarely spoken to.’

Translated from the French by Stephanie Smee.

Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami

David Karashima

‘Luke believes that the early stories might not have been published if the author and translator were uncompromising.’

The Appointment

Katharina Volckmer

‘I know that I can trust you, and that death is silent. It’s never the loud things that kill us, the things that make us vomit and scream and cry. Those things are just looking for attention.’

That Time of Year

Marie NDiaye

‘The fact was that outside of summertime they knew nothing about the place at all.’

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

People From My Neighbourhood: Behind the Scenes

Clare Skeats

Clare Skeats on the cover design for Hiromi Kawakami’s latest book of stories, translated by Ted Goossen.

People From My Neighbourhood

Hiromi Kawakami

‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’ Translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen.