Granta | The Home of New Writing

Sana Krasikov and Viv Groskop In Conversation

A Place that Belongs to Us

Daniel Trilling

‘The notes belong to you, said the guards, but the paper you wrote them on is ours.’

Fragmentary non-fiction by Daniel Trilling.

Baghdadland

Aline Deschamps & Rattawut Lapcharoensap

‘The photographs do not feel like a documentary record of kids in theme parks so much as a startling lyric glimpse of some inner vision that they all might be having of one.’

Rattawut Lapcharoensap introduces the photography of Aline Deschamps.

Fatty

Dizz Tate

‘There sat the joy of the shopping centre, what I thought of as its secret heart. A white rabbit.’

A short story by Dizz Tate.

But the Heart in a Sense Is Far from Me Floating Out There

Peter Gizzi

‘It’s right to extract bone from the afterlife’

A poem by Peter Gizzi.

Fateha

Sana Valiulina

‘While Fateha is fleeing westward with her children, another woman is trying to save herself from the city on the shore of the Sea of Azov.’

Memoir by Sana Valiulina, translated by Polly Gannon.

Signs of an Approaching War

Volodymyr Rafeyenko

‘We were ourselves migrating birds; in a sense, refugees, displaced persons, without a home or a home town.’

Volodymyr Rafeyenko on the war on Ukraine, translated by Sasha Dugdale.

Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew

Sandra Cisneros

‘Life is not worth living / without salami.’

A poem by Sandra Cisneros.

Figs

Sandra Cisneros

‘The liver in love / means the body is healthy’

A poem by Sandra Cisneros.

Fault Lines

Jane Delury

‘My mother is only seventy, but she has the bones of a ninety-year-old, the marrow like lace.’

A story by Jane Delury.

A Wolf in the Forest Wants

Sarah Moss

‘I biked to the hospital anyway, because it didn’t occur to me to think of an alternative form of transport.’

Sarah Moss on her admission to hospital.

Édouard’s Sixteen

Kevin Lambert

‘Laurence’s busy pre-mourning himself and his lover; he knows their thing’s got an end date, it’s not far off now.’

A story by Kevin Lambert, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman.

Another Patagonia

Louis Rogers

‘From the sloth skin onwards, In Patagonia is built around scraps and surfaces.’

Louis Rogers on travelling in Bruce Chatwin’s footsteps.

Mothercare

Lynne Tillman

Lynne Tillman on mother love and obligation.

Where Life Lives On

Tess Gunty

An excerpt from Tess Gunty’s debut novel The Rabbit Hutch.

Epicrisis

Kirill Kobrin

Kirill Kobrin on living through war and the conflict in Ukraine. Translated from the Russian by Veronika Zitta.

It’s Been Evening all day Long

Daniel Khalastchi

‘Just as blank I sink the bank beneath / my grief of never having money.’

A poem by Daniel Khalastchi.

Haunting Myself

Seán Hewitt

‘Lying is something I had become good at with practice.’

An excerpt from All Down Darkness Wide.

Vapors

Rebecca Miller

‘She turned toward the voice and there he was, standing there, like Death.’

A short story by Rebecca Miller.

Notes on Craft

Missouri Williams

‘After a series of seizures in my temporal lobe, I started to forget words and say sentences backwards.’

Missouri Williams on the drive to circle back.

Scattered All Over the Earth

Yoko Tawada

‘You don’t understand. The country where I used to live is now gone.’

and the earth drank deep

Ntsika Kota

Ntsika Kota is the winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa.

The Stars Are Blind

Anna Dorn

‘A few years ago, while in between jobs, I started doing astrology readings for cash.’

Anna Dorn on her astrology journey.

In Conversation

Leslie Jamison & Margo Jefferson

‘The self is the work of art. Criticism puts that self in the service of other art.’

The authors discuss the multiplicity of the self, the idea of necessity, and how to work with what you lack.

The Last Diver on Earth

Sofia Mariah Ma

Winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for Asia.

Podcast | Eula Biss

Eula Biss

‘What does it say about capitalism that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying?’

Eula Biss on her book Having and Being Had.

Podcast | Stephanie Sy-Quia

Stephanie Sy-Qyia

‘Empires fall like milk teeth.’

Stephanie Sy-Quia on her collection Amnion.

On Marble

Rachel Cusk

‘Two things – beauty and horror – are especially lasting.’

Rachel Cusk visits a marble bearing island in Greece’s Aegean sea.

Divination

Guadalupe Nettel

‘It is easy, when we are young, to have ideals and to live according to them.’

An excerpt from Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born.

Podcast | Tice Cin

Tice Cin

‘Careful when you turn your eyes towards someone, you allow them the chance to turn theirs on you.’

Tice Cin on her debut novel Keeping the House.

Abandonment

Ralf Webb

‘I sensed that as she listened she looked right through my skull and saw the cringing figure living there, the figure that keeps guard over all my secret strategies and disguises.’

New fiction from Ralf Webb.

A Hat for Lemer

Cecil Browne

Winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for Canada and Europe.

Dogs of Summer

Andrea Abreu

‘There was no one around that day, so we decided to put on our bikini tops for the first time.’

An extract from Andrea Abreu’s debut novel. Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches.

Three Poems

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

‘create a national holiday in your namelessness, in my head.’

Poems from the author’s debut collection Quiet.

Bridge Over the Yallahs River

Diana McCaulay

Winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region.

Scream Queen

Julia Armfield

‘She is well-behaved, as icons go, she toes the party line.’

Short fiction by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea.