Granta | The Home of New Writing

Objects in Mirror

Among the Citizen Soldiers

Karan Mahajan

Karan Mahajan visits Lexington, Virginia – a centre of the Confederary – in the wake of the far-right rally in Charlottesville.

Assuming the Habits of the Day and Night

Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo

‘my every day is a being in of being / a mixity of worlds’

The Scream

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida

‘That supremacist is the idea, in those brothers and sisters of mine, of shyness (which no one understands) being an encumbrance that they should purge as they try to find in their interaction with the world a perfect mixture of disdain, meekness and expansiveness.’

Entwined

Judith Scott & Joyce Wallace Scott

‘Through her art, Judy found a way to create beauty from what others discarded and, most importantly, she found her voice.’

Davos Woman

Trisha De Borchgrave

‘Did she process my gentle hand in the same way as the objectifying touch of the men before me? Did she know the difference?’

Rachel B. Glaser | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Rachel B. Glaser & Luke Neima

'If you can surprise yourself with your writing then it’s a lot more fun, and it’s a lot more interesting. That often involves creating characters you’ve never met or writing people that are not like you.’

Prozac Culture

Brian Dillon

Brian Dillon on the Prozac craze of the 90s, and his experience taking the infamous antidepressant.

Two Poems

Anne Michaels

‘I told you how the bison woke / the earth / I knew you were listening’

Yaa Gyasi | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Yaa Gyasi & Luke Neima

‘Place is something I'm fascinated by and how it shapes you in ways that are really hard to see and imagine’

Getting Away With It

Timothy Phillips

A case of Russian espionage from Tim Phillips' book The Secret Twenties: British Intelligence, the Russians, and the Jazz Age.

Jillian Weise | Five Things Right Now

Jillian Weise

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. She shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.

Monsterhuman

Kjersti Skomsvold

‘Waking is now worse than falling asleep, I didn’t think that was possible.’ Translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook.

Two Poems

Dara Wier

‘here we come / with our living // fruit baskets and / soon to wilt white flowers’

The Survivals of Lafcadio Hearn

Kenny Fries

‘Did Hearn feel comfortable in Japan because being a foreigner overshadowed his physical difference?’

Stillness | State of Mind

Eoghan Walls

‘It is half twelve and I am labouring over the word Stillen. My laptop is open on the coffee table, pushed up against baby wipes and a row of empties.’

Discipline

Geeta Tewari

‘Your virginity guarantees your happiness, my mother had explained numerous times.’ New fiction from Geeta Tewari.

Out of the Cell

Pico Iyer

‘I was inside a silence that was not an absence of noise so much as the living presence of everything I habitually walked – or sleep-walked – past.’

Trollhättan

Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown on Swedish society and the Trollhättan school attack.

Garth Risk Hallberg | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Garth Risk Hallberg & Luke Neima

‘I am very interested in the question of reality on the one hand and imagination on the other, so the mirror has to be angled slightly to take in something that isn’t already there’

Jesse Ball | Interview

Jesse Ball

‘Confusion is the only natural response to the world, the alternative would be to just fall in with everyone else’s plans.’

Water, Water, Everywhere

Darrell Hartman

Darrell Hartman on water: from diving to climate change, hurricanes Irma and Harvey to the advent of ‘Blue Mind’.

Two Poems

Jillian Weise

‘You want to get married? / We could die here // for lack of light’

Blameless

Claudio Magris

‘People think they’re destroying, but it’s hard work, nearly impossible; building is easy, illusory but easy.’

Second Mother

Sinéad Gleeson

‘The cortex shrinks where the cells used to be. The spaces in between expand. Islands in the sea of the mind. An archipelago of the former self.’ Sinéad Gleeson on Alzheimer's disease.

If Mother’s Happy

Kathleen McCaul Moura

‘Towards the end of my pregnancy, like many women, my emotions were taut, stretched thin like the skin round my middle.’

Sympathy | State of Mind

Rachel Hewitt

‘Before motherhood, I had not thought much about sympathy.’

Esmé Weijun Wang | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Esmé Weijun Wang

‘I really love Southern Gothic literature and so part of me was like – well, what if I could create an Immigrant Gothic?’

The Fashion of Kathy Acker

Chris Kraus

An extract from Chris Kraus’s new biography, After Kathy Acker.