Granta | The Home of New Writing

Hair

My Enemy’s Cherry Tree

Wang Ting-Kuo

‘And the truth is, my heart was tied in knots, and pain bored into the marrow of my bones when I heard about his illness.’

In Search of Beauty: Blackness as a Poem in Saudi Arabia

Sulaiman Addonia

Sulaiman Addonia on the slow process of rediscovering the beauty of black skin after moving to Saudi Arabia as a child.

Two Poems

Jenny George

‘This had happened once before, / when my life first split / into comfort and pain.’

Exhale

Beth Gardiner

‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’

Oval

Elvia Wilk

‘We’re trying to prove that it’s possible to live sustainably and not be such a freak about it.’

How Do You Write a Memoir When You Can’t Remember?

Wendy Mitchell & Anna Wharton

Wendy Mitchell, who has been living with dementia since 2014, discusses the process of writing her memoir with her ghostwriter, Anna Wharton.

The Power of a Name

Rebecca Tamás

‘When English is the dominant everything, you can’t help wanting to fight for the little speck of the rest of your self.’

Our Agent At Dawn

Nina Ellis

‘After I kill him I’ll go to Graceland.’

Maid Marian

Lisa Taddeo

‘It had taken Noni many years to stop wishing she’d been a woman like that.’

Two Poems

Joe Dunthorne

‘I’ve seen it hang in muslin / like a freshly popped-out eye.’

Four Poems

Michael Earl Craig

‘Running through the ages from this casual rabbit.’

Two Poems

Caroline Knox

‘Make way, please, for the / cold blob; not blog, it’s / blob.’

Fires

James Pogue

‘In 2018 in northern California, 21,000 homes burned.’

A Mother’s Dilemma

Victor Lodato

‘I can hear the girl scratching a pencil inside a notebook. I don’t like it. I’ve asked her not to write about me.’

The Governesses

Anne Serre

‘For the governesses, moving in with Monsieur and Madame Austeur was like a homecoming.’

On Meeting Mrs Obama

Sarah Ladipo Manyika

‘Michelle’s story, while deeply rooted in the American story, speaks to experiences that are universal.’

The Pine Islands

Marion Poschmann

‘Gilbert Silvester woke up distraught. Mathilda’s black hair lay spread out on the pillow next to him, tentacles of a malevolent pitch-black jellyfish.’

Two Poems

Yanyi

‘It murmurs beneath the crust of the ground, or a person who serves as the ground you stand on.’

Radicalisation in the Digital Age

Marc Weitzmann

Marc Weitzmann on how radicalisation happens in the digital age.

Animalia

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

An excerpt from Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

The Poem in the Pocket

Héctor Abad Faciolince

‘The note stated that it was by Borges, and I believed that, or at least I wanted to believe it.’

Ghostlands

Jennifer Kabat

Jennifer Kabat on the Anti-Rent War, one of the earliest moments of rural populism in the US, and something few know about outside the Catskill Mountains.

On High Heels and Lotus Feet

Summer Brennan

Summer Brennan on high heels, foot-binding, and our ongoing performances of gender.

The Polyglot Lovers

Lina Wolff

‘When we were sixteen years old, I broke Johnny’s nose with the back of my hand.’

In Conversation

Daisy Johnson & Alan Trotter

Daisy Johnson and Alan Trotter discuss their latest novels, how they approach research, and the ways in which myths, horror movies and detective fiction influence their writing.

The Main Thing Is to Keep the Front Garden Immaculate

Simone Buchholz

An extract from Beton Rouge by Simone Buchholz, translated from the German by Rachel Ward.

Vintage 1954

Antoine Laurain

An extract from Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken.

Two Poems

Rebecca Tamás

‘that huge cobalt industrial complex eye / how can anything be that big’

A Night in the Engadine

John Kaag

John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche, camps out in the mountains of the Engadine where Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Dinah

Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith remembers her friend and cousin, Diana Athill.

10 Schools of Philosophy that should be better known (in the West)

Julian Baggini

The author of How The World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy explains ten of the most overlooked philosophies from around the world.

Martin Goodman | Notes on Craft

Martin Goodman

Martin Goodman on why it took him twenty years to write his latest novel, J SS Bach.

At the Edge of Night

Friedo Lampe

An excerpt from Friedo Lampe’s At the Edge of Night, translated from the German by Simon Beattie.

The Most Common State of Matter

Cara Blue Adams

‘She was quietly awed by her own panic.’

Two Poems

Anthony Caleshu

‘Consider the dramatic events that become ordinary people like us.’

Cotton Variation

Cortney Lamar Charleston

‘fibrous little trauma fruit, wan little wound-licker’