Granta | The Home of New Writing

The Alphabet of Birds

Karl Ove Knausgård | Interview

Karl Ove Knausgård & Sophia Efthimiatou

‘You are in the middle of your life and you think, how did I get here?’

Peter Stamm | Podcast

Peter Stamm & Ted Hodgkinson

Peter Stamm on imagining his characters as buildings, why he wants to have a room full of ugly objects and whether he believes that people can change.

Typical Global and Typical Local Food

Héctor Abad Faciolince

‘However, there are countries with an almost secret culinary culture, unknown to the immense majority of the world.’

Jo Shapcott & George Szirtes | Podcast

Jo Shapcott & George Szirtes

Jo Shapcott reads her poem ‘Callisto’s Song’ and talks to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about what drew her to render Callisto’s tragic transformation, and George Szirtes explains why he was compelled by Actaeon’s wayward gaze.

The Goddamn Particle

Naomi Alderman

‘When we find results that seem to make no sense, we should not be surprised or alarmed.’

How To Read Brazil

Vanessa Barbara, Daniel Galera & Chico Mattoso

Vanessa Barbara, Daniel Galera and Chico Mattoso share three essential works by Brazilian authors.

Nathan Englander | Interview

Nathan Englander & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I don’t want to write any story that I think can be written.’

Ben Lerner | Interview

Ben Lerner & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I have no memory of intending to write a novel.’

Marcelo Ferroni | Interview

Marcelo Ferroni

‘This is an exciting moment for Brazilian literature. We may see a batch of new, vibrant novels, really soon.’

The Self-Illuminated

Don Paterson

Don Paterson reads his poem, ‘The Self-Illuminated’ in memoriam Peter Porter, from Granta 119: Britain.

Two Poems

Niall Campbell

‘And so, last night, so cold, I listened to / the floorboards warp in the unwelcome heat.’

Sam Byers | Podcast

Sam Byers & Ted Hodgkinson

‘She lived in fear of him saying something interesting, which might make her fall in love with him; or something horrific, which would shatter the illusion she’d so carefully constructed.’

Marching Songs

Keith Ridgway

‘I believe, though I cannot prove, that my illness is due directly to the perverted Catholicism and megalomania of Mr Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, whom I met once.’

The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

John Freeman

From the first ever Best of Young British Novelists, which introduced Salman Rushdie and Rose...

Dear Peter

Simon Armitage & Ted Hughes

An unpublished letter by Ted Hughes, introduced by Simon Armitage. ‘It’s reassuring to see a spelling mistake (‘style’ for stile), and I love the maps.’

How Long is the Coast of Britain?

Jynne Martin

‘It is the hour for farewells. It is the hour.’

Léonie Hampton | Interview

Léonie Hampton & Yuka Igarashi

‘I see a dichotomy at play where I am trying to be truthful, but it’s hard to be direct.’

Servitude

Tessa Hadley

‘We had each needed the other for something, which wasn’t kindness or love. We’d both had dry husks for our hearts, that day.’

Adam Thirlwell | Interview

Adam Thirlwell & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I suppose it’s that word hyper that I was after: I was trying to find a form for a kind of hyper energy or anxiety.’

Waterloo East

Lorraine Mariner

‘On one of those mornings / when I felt like resigning / from my life.’

Rachel Seiffert | Podcast

Rachel Seiffert & Yuka Igarashi

Rachel Seiffert reads her work and talks to Granta about writing silences, the inescapability of history, the Troubles and learning to love her characters.

Two Poems

Paula Bohince

‘What sparrows come, / come briefly, briefly displacing / the nothingness.’

Paula Bohince | Interview

Paula Bohince & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I like the friction of fixed physical atmospheres with different lives passing through.’

Jubilee

Carys Davies

‘His name was Arthur Pritt, he said, and he was sorry for the day.’

Rowan Ricardo Phillips | Interview

Rowan Ricardo Phillips & Ted Hodgkinson

‘Poetry’s strongest response, on the other hand, is determined, open-ended world-making, which is the work of empathy.’

Home: Peckham

Evie Wyld

‘Peckham is the place of my adolescence, my first cobbled together attempts at dressing myself from the charity shops on Rye Lane.’

Two Girls in a Boat

Emma Martin

‘This was a tiredness that caused Hannah to walk into a travel agent in Clapham High Street on a grey Tuesday morning and buy a ticket to New Zealand.’

Emma Martin | Interview

Emma Martin

‘I’ve occasionally caught a kind of self-consciousness stalking me when I write about New Zealand.’

Diana McCaulay | Interview

Diana McCaulay

‘I want my writing to be grounded in the real and complex place, without nostalgia or idealization.’

The Dolphin Catcher

Diana McCaulay

‘Lloyd heard his grandfather’s voice in his mind: I come from a line of fishermen.’

The Ghost Marriage

Andrea Mullaney

‘I did not meet my husband until six years after he died.’

Andrea Mullaney | Interview

Andrea Mullaney

‘To move past the ugly parts of history, you have to acknowledge them, on all sides, and this is what I think historical fiction can do so well: show how we got from there to here.’

Jekwu Anyaegbuna | Interview

Jekwu Anyaegbuna

‘I think it would be counterproductive for me to think too much about readers while producing a piece of fiction because the enjoyment of it varies from one person to another – and it’s impossible to satisfy everybody.’