Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Reproducing Paul

Des Fitzgerald

‘Having a child, I came to see, was more a kind of haunting.’

An essay by Des Fitzgerald.

The Golden Record

Caspar Henderson

‘The two copies of the Golden Record were shot into space nearly fifty years ago.’

Caspar Henderson on music sent into space by NASA.

Plastic Mothers

Lauren John Joseph

‘In essence she acted as though I were the kid her mother had left her to raise.’

Lauren John Joseph on the blurred contours of motherhood.

Miniature Twins

Omer Friedlander

‘We were so small, palm-sized, that our parents went to a doll shop in Jerusalem to find clothes that would fit us.’

Omer Friedlander writes about his twin.

The Tiddler

Charlie Gilmour

‘It was a competition, though I hadn’t realised that yet.’

Charlie Gilmour on bullying.

The Pain Cave

Lauren Groff

‘I would rather have died of hypothermia than let my siblings win.’

Lauren Groff on competitiveness.

Speaking Brother

Will Harris

‘I don’t have a brother; I’m an only child. But a few years ago I started writing poems in which a brother appears.’

Will Harris on why he created a brother.

Living Rooms

Sam Johnson-Schlee

‘Before chintziness there was chintz, a fabric produced in India and imported to Europe by colonial traders.’

Sam Johnson-Schlee on what chintz means.

Letters from Ukraine

Lindsey Hilsum

‘As every soldier and every journalist who has ever covered a war knows – sleeping and eating are the most important things.’

Lindsey Hilsum writes home from Ukraine.

The Recipe

Rebecca May Johnson

‘The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language.’

Rebecca May Johnson on recipes, repetition and intimacy.

Haunting Myself

Seán Hewitt

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

An excerpt from All Down Darkness Wide.

My Mother Photographs Me in a Bath of Dead Squid

Lars Horn

‘She is not a conventionally “good” mother. But then, put like that, it sounds like a slow death sentence anyhow.’

Lars Horn on modeling for their artist mother.

Diary of a Journey to Senegal

Ishion Hutchinson

‘Sea night music: what is the music?’

Ishion Hutchinson in Senegal.

The Lapwing Act

Patrick Galbraith

‘We claimed the places that were theirs and they were forced to take refuge on what we left behind.’

An excerpt from In Search of One Last Song.