Granta | The Home of New Writing

Camelot

Common Whipping

Naben Ruthnum

A young film composer turns to prostitution in a short story by Naben Ruthnum, set in a Rome of the early 1970s.

‘I Am Going to Speak to You about Anxiety’

Hernán Díaz

‘Her mother was still sitting on the sofa, stroking the left armrest while she talked.’

Terrors

Kiese Laymon

An excerpt from Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

Three Poems

Sophie Robinson

‘you can call my price by any name and she will come just the same’

Ghost Wall

Sarah Moss

An excerpt from Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall, published by Granta Books.

Nine Pints

Rose George

‘My blood is on its way to becoming something that even when given for free can be brokered and sold like ingots or wheat.’

Writing Like Degas Paints

Sulaiman Addonia

Sulaiman Addonia on how Edgar Degas’s nude portraits inspired his latest novel, Silence Is My Mother Tongue.

Regan

Brian Booker

A coming-of-age story about an awkward roommate on Roosevelt Island, ordering bisexual porn tapes from catalogues and writing summaries of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet for a living.

Slip of a Fish

Amy Arnold

‘Charlie’s swimming. Six strokes then she turns to breathe, six more and all the way to the end of the length. She’s a swimmer, Charlie. She’s a bit of a fish, a slip of a fish.’

Tether Tennis

John Kinsella

‘Tryptamine skies and the forehand backhand falter / in earth’s revolutions’

Candidate

Jessie Greengrass

‘All through winter and another summer we wait, but time passes more quickly now that we have a purpose. I feel it flowing.’

I Wrote a Poem About a Fucking River

Samantha Walton

‘though I’ve sat where torrents recall no slush / I’m drawn by your ceramic explosions’

Sharing the same bed, dreaming different dreams

Ma Jian

Ma Jian shows the excess and corruption of the Chinese Communist party in this excerpt from his new novel, China Dream, translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew.

The Male Hearth

Ayşegül Savaş & Bekir Ormancı

‘In these miniature worlds lined with goods, filled with the tools and residues of labor, we experience the enclosure of hearths; of a unique domesticity within exclusively male spheres.’

Reflections on shame in sacred spaces

Kate Duckney

‘At sunset the light is both nasty and nice / in my robe.’

Lucia Berlin Writes Home

Nina Ellis

Nina Ellis on the life and writing of Lucia Berlin. ‘If Berlin's collections were houses, their hallways would change direction without warning, and their rooms would be bright and dark at the same time.’

Hoarfrost

John Patrick McHugh

Can infidelity make up for infidelity? New fiction from John Patrick McHugh.

I’ll Go On

Hwang Jungeun

‘Swish-swish, swish-swish. The sound fills the large space around them, and Nana finds this deeply satisfying.’

Amy Sackville | The Proust Questionnaire

Amy Sackville

What is your guiltiest pleasure? Is it really a pleasure if you feel bad about it?’

Day of Awe

Diane Williams

New short fiction from Diane Williams' Collected Stories. ‘I fear I lack deep feelings, have flighty ideas, and am often irritable over trifles.’

Consolation Puppies

Amy Butcher & Martha Park

A graphic essay on dogs, adoption and Donald Trump.

After Half-Time

Shamik Ghosh

Subha Prasad Sanyal’s translation of ‘After Half-Time’ by Shamik Ghosh is the winner of Harvill Secker’s Young Translators’ Prize 2018.

The Minutes

Nell Stevens

‘The Minutes’ by Nell Stevens is shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2018.

The Seafood Buffet

Pirjo Hassinen

‘Things that felt like cold stones began to be piled around her ankles. Lemon halves.’

Full Moon on a Dark Night

Soumya Sankar Bose

A new photo-essay by Soumya Sankar Bose that recreates the dreams of his LGBT friends in India.

The Fucking Lake

Diane Williams

New short fiction from Diane Williams. ‘The major events of my life are done with, except, of course, for my final downfall.’

Common Cyborg

Jillian Weise

‘I’m nervous at night when I take off my leg. I wait until the last moment before sleep to un-tech because I am a woman who lives alone’

Danez Smith and Kaveh Akbar In Conversation

Danez Smith & Kaveh Akbar

Danez Smith and Kaveh Akbar share sublime food experiences, discuss their latest collections and ask one another how best to bring community into poetry.

Breasts: A History

Krys Malcolm Belc

‘My breasts are shrinking. As my fat redistributes it settles in my belly and leaves my chest.’

Now, Now, Louison

Jean Frémon

Jean Frémon on the artist Louise Bourgeois and her fascination with spiders. Translated from the French by Cole Swensen.

The Closet

Kim Sagwa

‘It’s the hour of afterglow, the day’s demise, the sky bleeding to death.’

Three poems

Mary Ruefle

‘One of the loveliest possibilities / is that the truth is made of glass’

Cowboys and Angels

Chelsea Bieker

‘I had me a cowboy once on a hot steam Friday night.’ New fiction from Chelsea Bieker.

The Poker

Kathryn Scanlan

‘I looked back and there was something wrong about his hand – how it cupped her bottom, how it probed.’

Cassiopeia (three back-to-front songs)

Diana Anphimiadi

‘Anyway, I did not die. / I lined the sky, inside-out.’ Translated from the Georgian by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters.

Parfait

Hiromi Kawakami

‘He comes all the way here after he died and the two of you are making small talk?’ New fiction by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell