Granta | The Home of New Writing

Agnes of Iowa

Anosh Irani | Notes on Craft

Anosh Irani

‘The interiority that we keep speaking of in fiction is built on pain’

In This Heart You Burn

D. W. Wilson

‘Years later, broken-chested beneath the axle of a Ford Mustang, he’ll dream back to a night on the shores of Mimeer Lake when he amphetamined through till dawn and cracked some asshat’s nose with his elbow and gave his virginity to Isabel Crease.’

Mountains Don’t Know Borders

Lois Parshley

‘In the Balkans, the present is often perched precariously on top of the past.’

Poetry in the Beginning

Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion shares how he came to write poetry.

Cold Mountain: Premières esquisses

Andrée A. Michaud

Ce qui s’est passé par la suite relève de la folie, folie des vents s’entredéchirant, folie de l’homme que ces vents avaient poussé chez moi.

Cold Mountain

Andrée A. Michaud

What came after was the stuff of madness, the madness of warring winds, the madness of the man these winds had delivered up to me.

Kamila Shamsie In Conversation

Kamila Shamsie & Eleanor Chandler

‘There’s a certain adrenaline rush that comes from not knowing.’ Kamila Shamsie on writing the unsaid, the challenges of adapting Antigone and the role of the novel in politics.

Three Poems

Sylvia Legris

‘By the dog the minced oaths, / the god-wounds, the solemnly / declared chronical maladies.’

Judges

Natalie Eilbert

‘I was thick dough when you ran us away. I never / knew you.’

Canopy

Naben Ruthnum

‘We think of L’Auberge as more of a sanatorium than a rehab. Certainly not as a mental hospital.’ Fiction from Naben Ruthrum.

Letter to Razan Zaitouneh

Kamila Shamsie

PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer – we stand in solidarity with writers who have suffered persecution exercising their freedom of expression.

Max Porter reads Will Self

Max Porter & Will Self

In this episode of the podcast, Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers reads ‘False Blood’ by Will Self.

Ten Books that Changed the World

Martin Puchner

Martin Puchner on ten books that have changed the course of world history.

Mary O’Donoghue | Notes on Craft

Mary O’Donoghue

In this new series, we give authors a space to discuss the way they write – from technique and style to inspirations that inform their craft.

Introduction

Madeleine Thien & Catherine Leroux

Madeleine Thien and Catherine Leroux introduce Granta 141: Canada in both English and French.

Mangilaluk’s Highway

Nadim Roberts

‘They joked about how tough they’d be by the time they got home.’

Golgotha

Benoit Jutras

‘Our nation is a spell of nerves and gas. We say yes to monsters, to elegies etched in our palms.’ Translated by Daniel Canty.

The Rememberer

Johanna Skibsrud

‘The history of human thought, she would sigh despairingly, was nothing more, after all, than an arduous dream.’

Wallace Stevens’s Memory

Armand Garnet Ruffo

‘It was / a line that signaled absolute forgetting / and it made me want to weep into my drink’

Lagomorph

Alexander MacLeod

‘It is important to establish, before this begins, that I never thought of myself as an animal person.’

Introduction | in translation

Catherine Leroux & Madeleine Thien

  En 1967, on a scrupuleusement désigné le Canada comme dominion, une expression empruntée au...

The Initials

Alex Leslie

‘There was no inquiry and no report either because we all have new names now.’

Writing While Worried

Fanny Britt

‘Just as it can spur me on, worry is adept at stifling and silencing.’

The Battlefield

Dominique Fortier

‘For years, you have been passing through my life; like a comet, disappearing as quickly as you come.’ Translated by Rhonda Mullins.

Le Cirque

Rawi Hage

‘Circuses have the capacity to transform those rejected by society – the acrobats, rope-walkers, puppeteers and expelled demons – into wonders and celebrities.’

The Martians Claim Canada

Margaret Atwood

‘Mushrooms have long memories. Some of them are thousands of years old. However, they are not always very talkative.’

A Sharing Economy

Karen Solie

‘The Paying Guest rises in the middle of the night / to turn off the radio where no radio exists’

The Book Tree

Larry Tremblay

‘I dreamed of dictionaries. I crammed myself with liquorice, honeymoons, caramels.’

Swimming Coach

Anosh Irani

‘He was at home in the water, and it was from here that he would find ways to live, reasons to live.’

Of Roses and Insects

Chloé Savoie-Bernard

‘The insects dissect the layers of my father’s life, our lives and my mother’s life that have collected in this sad house.’ Translated from the French by Neil Smith.

Bina

Anakana Schofield

‘If you’ve come all this way here to listen to me, your life will undoubtedly get worse. I’m here to warn you, not to reassure you.’

verbal pathways

Daphne Marlatt

‘it’s rain / forest wet the same but different air’

Life of the Father

Alain Farah

‘Two times is a repetition. Three times is a tradition, or a curse.’ Translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler.

How to Pronounce Knife

Souvankham Thammavongsa

‘She thought of what else he didn’t know. What else she would have to find out for herself.’

Essay

Gary Barwin

‘the heart is an ocean-sized drum / a rat-sized jellyfish’