Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

The Abyss

Rafael Frumkin

‘I came home this past fall to the Chicago suburb where I’d lived with my parents from age nine until I left for college in 2008, and I moved back into my childhood bedroom.’

Self-Made Man

Mark Gevisser

Mark Gevisser examines the personal, political and social issues of transgender identity in America.

The Making of a Writer

Kent Haruf

‘I learned to live completely inwardly in those years.’

The Beauty of the Package

Pico Iyer

‘You can throw yourself into any fantasy, she (and her country) might have been saying, so long as you don’t mistake it for real life.’

Scavengers

Adam Johnson

‘I was dying to buy something, anything that would help my wife and children understand the profound surrealism and warped reality I’d experienced on my research trip to North Korea.’

Aracelis Girmay | First Sentence

Aracelis Girmay

‘For me, it happens most with early 90s R&B.’

A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

David Gates

‘It took longer and longer for the next one to come, and then there wasn’t a next one.’

Foreigners

Daniel Gascón

‘It would’ve been a magical moment if my neighbours hadn’t started fucking at that very second.’