Michael Symmons Roberts

‘The rich, tomato red that decorated most of my bedroom – curtains, lampshade, bedspread – and the pale, rinsed-out blue like a milky north-west sky that represented the other side.’

Issue 98

Jeremy Seabrook

‘The dead do not leave us alone.’

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan on the evolution of feminist judgments in India.

Saba Sams

‘In all the years I spent dreaming of motherhood, not once did I dream of men. If anything, I expected that romance would be my downfall.’

Saba Sams on the women who raised her, and becoming a mother at 22.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

‘I once had had a thought / About a thought I once had had.’

Issue 7

Graham Swift

‘We have not yet come to the most remarkable episode in this quasi-mythological quest for the genesis of the eel.’

Caitlin Pearson

The Royal African Society takes a look back at the history of the Africa Writes festival, their annual celebration of contemporary literature from Africa and the diaspora.

George Rosie

‘I’ve seen many images from the Lockerbie calamity since but none has stayed with me like the picture of Shannon’s pretty, smiling face.’

Mike Power

‘The Dark Web is a shadow internet, an unindexed, unseen and lawless corner of cyberspace.’

Bilal Tanweer

‘He used to see things in his dreams and made them his policies. Yup, Americans loved his dreams because he was screwing the Soviets and Comrades in them.’

Issue 62

Richard Lloyd Parry

Issue 127

David Peace

‘At last, at last. His first steps, on Chinese soil.’

Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma, a Granta Best Young American Novelist and author of new novel Family Life, shares five things he’s reading, watching and thinking about.

Issue 3

Emma Tennant

‘Agony belonged to night and would take advantage of the union, increase the whirligig of pain.’