Granta | The Home of New Writing

Rainbow People

The Shepherds

Lauren Hough

‘Our pasts are so unbelievable we need a witness for our own memory.’

Fly

Feng Sun Chen

‘Every day, I see a monstrosity in the kissing hole.’

Bad Faith

Ken Follett

‘Every sect needs jargon. We did not have churches, we had halls; services were called meetings; the congregation was the assembly; elders were overseers’

Blue Sky Days

Tomas van Houtryve & Eliza Griswold

‘For those caught beneath its thrum, there’s no comfort that the drone, and whoever is at its helm in America, is only targeting the bad guys.’ Eliza Griswold introduces Tomas van Houtryve's unsettling photo-essay taken by drones coming close to civilian life in the manner of the drones currently deployed in Afghanistan.

The Interpreters: Among the Brahmins of Benares

Aatish Taseer

‘That first sight of the city curled around the river goes through me like the breath of something old and known and familiar.’ Aatish Taseer revisits Varanasi.

Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard

Ivan Chistyakov

‘Freedom, even with hunger and cold, is still precious and irreplaceable.’

Your Youth

Kelly Schirmann

‘I have never been in love / with so many variants of nothing.’

The Transition

Luke Kennard

In the not-so-distant future, middle-class underachievers are faced with a difficult choice: prison or motivational business classes.

Cassette-tape

Javier Zamora

‘I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.’

To Live and Die in South Korea

Françoise Huguier & A.M. Homes

‘Blow the candle out, taste the darkness and come back changed.’

Vladimir in Love

Lara Vapnyar

‘He regretted not buying the flowers.’

My Angel

Adam Thorpe

‘I am full of unreal desires and worthless imaginings.’

Enjaracon Sponaeda

Will Alexander

‘how can all the pressures of surveillance / fail to describe me?’

Going Diamond

Sarah Gerard

‘In Amway, there’s no such thing as contentment.’

Julie’s Life

Emmanuel Carrère & Darcy Padilla

‘Even today, she still speaks with emotion about Dorian, the transsexual so proud of her breasts, Diane, who weighed only sixty-five pounds, and Steven, who was so frightened of dying alone that Darcy wished she could promise to be with him when the time came.’ Emmanuel Carrère on addiction and poverty in an forgotten America.

Things I Never Told Her

Marian Ryan

‘I will lay down what I want, and I will get it, and prove I am not the kind of woman who is controlled by a man.’

Teaching After Trump

Melissa Febos

‘In a country whose government we do not trust, who do we need more than writers and teachers? And what is more powerful than an inspired youth?’

Open After My Death

Linda H. Davis

‘I had become the kind of parent I never wanted to be.’

Protest

Various Artists

Protest is an exhibition of historical and contemporary works by sixteen artists concerned with the sociopolitical issues of their day.

The White Bloc

James Pogue

‘This election made clear that white people in this country have begun to vote how Southern whites always have: as a bloc.’

The Day After Trump Won

Leslie Jamison

‘I feel afraid, and I do not know what to make of yesterday’s belief. I can see that belief like an object shimmering underwater, a kind of relic.’

Her Boy

Mika Taylor

‘She is the first dolphin mother, Peter her boy genius.’

Heavily Redacted

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

‘Syllables are excised by / X-Acto, fed into a shredder / for good measure.’

Granta Reads: Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘The Husband Stitch’

Carmen Maria Machado

Rosalind Porter reads Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘The Husband Stitch’. The story was first published in...

First Semester

Rachel B. Glaser & John Maradik

‘When she reached her hand into his underwear, again she felt the turtle.’

Five Things Right Now: Eliza Robertson

Eliza Robertson

‘For me, astrology’s opened this new language and field of understanding.’

Wendy

Ka Bradley

‘Nathan: there’s something in the basement. In the locked rooms I was telling you about.’

What’s Not There Can’t Hurt You

Sara Taylor

‘A shadow gained body and grew, looming over the bed, and he caught the impression of long teeth and many limbs, smelled something claylike and vegetal.’

While the Nightjar Sleeps

Andrew Michael Hurley

‘But while the nightjar sleeps,’ said the mole, ‘it dreams of what it used to be and still sees beyond what isn’t true. And so can we, if we choose to look.’

Our Last Guest

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

‘Maybe anyone becomes unbearable after enough time in the honeymoon suite.’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s story of eternity á deux.

Bad Dreams

Eli Goldstone

‘I could do nothing but lie there, locked inside my body.’

Witchcraft Today

Diane Williams

‘Two women appeared embracing two of a kind – that is each woman held onto a globular lamp base that had luster.’

The Fog and the Sea

Lily Dunn

Lily Dunn on her father’s losing battle with alcoholism.