The Alphabet of Birds
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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An unpublished letter by Ted Hughes, introduced by Simon Armitage.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.’
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.
Paula Bohince | Interview
Paula Bohince & Ted Hodgkinson
‘I like the friction of fixed physical atmospheres with different lives passing through.’
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.’