Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Poetry in the Beginning

Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion shares how he came to write poetry.

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.

Among the Citizen Soldiers

Karan Mahajan

Karan Mahajan visits Lexington, Virginia – a centre of the Confederary – in the wake of the far-right rally in Charlottesville.

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.’

The Fashion of Kathy Acker

Chris Kraus

An extract from Chris Kraus’s new biography, After Kathy Acker.

Chris Kraus on Kathy Acker

Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus discusses her new biography, After Kathy Acker, which looks at the life and work of the artist twenty years after her death. 

Comfort Woman

Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse on her work as a private investigator. ‘An escort service was providing prostitutes for football recruits, directly solicited by the university.’

Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People

Ben Mauk

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

Possessed | State of Mind

Jules Montague

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

Books Do Furnish a Room

Penelope Lively

‘The shelves say something about the person who has stocked them; they say much.’

Threshold | State of Mind

Barry Lopez

‘What we’re about to see is greater than the thing you’re running from.’

Talking Italish

Antonio Melechi

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

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.’

I come from a place on your bucket list

Deepti Kapoor

Deepti Kapoor on travel, authenticity and the peculiarity of being Indian in Uganda.