Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘What’s in a state of mind? How do we describe emotions, or the complex relationship between individuals and the state?’

Coming Home to the Counter-Revolution

Jack Shenker

‘My Cairo is an inverted city, one that wears its innards above the skin.’

Mistaken | State of Mind

Mary Ruefle

‘I take it, if only as a substitute for my unknown name’

Gay and Depressed | State of Mind

Andrew Solomon

‘It would be a bit more tolerable if we lived in a society that didn’t blame depression on its victims.’

Brother | State of Mind

Max Porter

‘We don’t often talk seriously or in depth about our childhood these days, but we know we could, and we know what good it did us.’

Chère Madame

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust’s letters to his neighbour, translated from the French by Lydia Davis.

The Peripatetic Penelope Fitzgerald

Lucy Scholes

Lucy Scholes on the highs, lows and package tours of Booker-prize-winning author Penelope Fitzgerald. ‘Fitzgerald’s life can only be attributed to the caprices of fate.’

Dead in Venice

Masahiko Shimada

‘If I wasn’t a fish spawned in the Brenta river, why was I so compelled to keep returning?’ Masahiko Shimada on his many trips to Venice.

The Myth of Creative Genius

Natasha Pulley

‘There’s a mysticism that surrounds writing fiction.’

Brontez Purnell Is Everything

Michelle Tea

Novelist, zinester, dancer, go-go-boy, punk, filmmaker, actor, performer, Brontez Purnell is everything.

The Tamarind is Always Sour

Keane Shum

‘By law, the more than one million Rohingya in Myanmar are almost all excluded from Myanmar citizenship, making them the largest stateless group in the world.’

Remembering Denis Johnson

J. Ryan Stradal

When people ask me what Denis was like, I always think about how he listened far more intently than just about any writer I’d ever met.

Any Idiot Can Write a Book

Nell Stevens

A production company is looking for contestants to participate in a new TV show, modelled on The Apprentice. They are seeking unpublished writers who have completed a novel.

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists 3.