Explore essays and memoir
Lucia Berlin Writes Home
Nina Ellis
Nina Ellis on the life and writing of Lucia Berlin. ‘If Berlin's collections were houses, their hallways would change direction without warning, and their rooms would be bright and dark at the same time.’
Common Cyborg
Jillian Weise
‘I’m nervous at night when I take off my leg. I wait until the last moment before sleep to un-tech because I am a woman who lives alone’
Breasts: A History
Krys Malcolm Belc
‘My breasts are shrinking. As my fat redistributes it settles in my belly and leaves my chest.’
Masculinity Is Leaving The Male Body
Seabright D. Mortimer
‘If we’re gonna imagine this beautiful queer paradise what form does a man take?’ – Seabright D. Mortimer on constructing masculine identity in genderqueer spaces.
Of Donuts I Have Loved
Miranda Dennis
‘Krispy Kremes melt at the touch, are tender and loving, are used by my family to perform a wholeness we do not always feel’
Paul Dalla Rosa | Notes on Craft
Paul Dalla Rosa
‘I feel like I’m haunting an empty building, inert, waiting for each room to burst into flames.’
After
April Ayers Lawson
‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.
A Few Words about Fake Breasts
Nell Boeschenstein
‘You repeat this over and over. You pinch your nipples harder. Then harder and harder still. You twist them. You dare them to say Mercy. You stare into your own eyes that are watching you from the mirror.’
A Summer of Japanese Literature
Dan Bradley
From manga to crime fiction, contemporary literature to Nobel-Prize-winning classics, here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on
Murasaki’s Paper Trail
Martin Puchner
Martin Puchner on how Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court, manage to write the first great novel of world literature.
Fred Pearce | Notes on Craft
Fred Pearce
‘For a hack like me, book-length meta-journalism is both a luxury and a challenge. I cannot hide my own views over 100,000 words, even if I want to.’
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
Editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 144: genericlovestory.
I Bite My Friends
Fernanda Eberstadt
‘The Easter Parade is winding down, when I spot Him. Her. Them. The Apparition.’
On Paris Hilton and Other Undead Things
Brittany Newell
‘What sex tapes offer, on a hauntological level, is an impossible closeness to that which is neither dead nor alive.’
Telling My Story
Stella Duffy
‘I wonder if they could all smell the queer on me, the queer in me, the burgeoning sexuality that I had no words for at the time.’
Cross-Dressers
Sébastien Lifshitz & Andrew McMillan
‘These images appear to give a glimpse of a ghost-self, a photographic negative of the heart.’ Andrew McMillan introduces photography curated by Sébastien Lifshitz.
Abscessed Tooth
Debra Gwartney
‘Silence allows me to pretend that this happened to someone else a long time ago, and not to me.’
Chameleon
Tomoko Sawada & Sayaka Murata
‘If Sawada can transform herself without limit, maybe I can too.’ Sayaka Murata introduces Tomoko Sawada’s photographs, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
See What You Do to Me
TaraShea Nesbit
‘My intention was to protect myself, and not to have to go back on my word.’
Jailbait
Ottessa Moshfegh
‘Part of what made him interesting was that I felt he would dismiss me the moment I bored him.’
What Do Women Want?
Devorah Baum
‘What we’re arguing about turns out to be how to speak to each other at all.’
What Silence Knows
Anthony Shadid
‘Words can’t quite re-create the smell of war. I have found myself trying to wash it out of my hair, off my fingers. More than once, I have run water over the soles of my shoes.’
To Remember Is to Live Again
Buddhadeva Bose & Amit Chaudhuri
‘Never, long as I live, will I forget the few days I had spent with the Millers.’ Buddhadeva Bose on his friendship with Henry Miller.
Five are the fingers, and five are the sins
Rebecca Watson
Rebecca Watson on the life of the man who prototyped fascism, the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio
To the Castle and Back
Václav Havel
‘I am announcing that I have returned from the USA. I thank all of those who worked in the domestic resistance. Likewise I thank all of us who worked in the foreign resistance.’
Addressing Mental Health Through Reading Well
Debbie Hicks
‘Reading Well is more than just a booklist – it represents the power of reading to change lives.’
The Editor’s Chair: On Christine Montalbetti
Alex Andriesse
‘For Montalbetti to have achieved this syntactic ease in French is a feat. For the translator to reproduce it in English requires the capacities of a medium.’
The Munduruku People Against Brazil
Tiffany Higgins
‘The Middle Tapajós Munduruku are not alone. Indigenous and traditional communities throughout the Tapajós River basin are facing increased degradation of their environment and the cultural sustenance practices that form the foundation of their lifeways.’
since feeling is first
Nuar Alsadir
‘The way we manage erotic knowledge is connected to our handling of unwanted truths’
Heart Berries
Terese Marie Mailhot
‘We started the affair in a small booth at Village Inn. I didn’t sleep the night before. You were my teacher, and we discussed my fiction.’
