Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People

Ben Mauk

Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.

Talking Italish

Antonio Melechi

‘For my mother and father, the past and present had both become foreign countries.’

Possessed | State of Mind

Jules Montague

‘I am neither fully awake nor entirely asleep. In fact, I wonder if I am even alive.’

Terra Nova

Robert Moor

Robert Moor remembers hitch-hiking across Newfoundland: ‘The way to pronounce Newfoundland, Bill and Sue instructed me, is to remember that it rhymes with understand.’

Poetry in the Beginning

Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion shares how he came to write poetry.

If Mother’s Happy

Kathleen McCaul Moura

‘Towards the end of my pregnancy, like many women, my emotions were taut, stretched thin like the skin round my middle.’

Best Book of 1818: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Luke Neima

‘What sets Hoffmann’s work apart is the meeting of the joint impulses of Enlightenment and Romantic thought’

Hoa Nguyen | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Hoa Nguyen

‘I didn’t have the language for why I could not be a tourist in the same way as my white counterparts.’

Mary O’Donoghue | Notes on Craft

Mary O’Donoghue

In this new series, we give authors a space to discuss the way they write – from technique and style to inspirations that inform their craft.