Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Upirngasaq (Arctic Spring)

Sheila Watt-Cloutier

‘Everyone benefits from a frozen Arctic. The future of the Arctic environment, and the Inuit it supports, is inextricably tied to the future of the planet.’

A Norwegian Nightmare

Alf Kjetil Walgermo

‘Could we somehow have avoided feeding the killer at our own breast?’

A question of identity

Dubravka Ugrešić

‘One of the first things a child learns is the sentiment: My country is… And so begins the homeland briefing that lasts from the cradle to the grave.’

A Report on Music in Ukraine

Ed Vulliamy

‘Nights at the opera in Ukraine – where everything, including every kind of music, has changed.’

Ed Vulliamy on music in Ukraine.

A Song About Singularities

Jack Underwood

‘Precious things, even those given to me lovingly, feel like a test.’

Jack Underwood on poetry and black holes.

A Thousand Splendid Stuns

Morwari Zafar

‘More important than anything else that fateful year was the life-defining transcendence of Peter Gabriel.’

A Very German Coup

Jan Wilm

‘The suspected ringleader was a 71-year-old real-estate developer with an engineering degree.’

Jan Wilm on an attempted coup in 2022.

A Woman Screaming

Saskia Vogel

‘I realized that neither revenge nor compulsive storytelling would release me from this pain.’

Alexis Wright | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Alexis Wright

‘In my imagination I have been to many villages and cities in the world.’

Ali the Muscle

Johnny West

‘All individuality is collapsed by the dog-eat-dog language of ‘us and them’ into a choice between one of two separate, irreconcilable identities.’

All I Know About Gertrude Stein

Jeanette Winterson

‘The more I love you, the more I feel alone.’

American Vogue

Edmund White

‘Mumbling is proof of artistic verisimilitude.’

An Afghanistan Picture Show

William T. Vollmann

‘The windbreakers of the passengers standing at the rail fluttered violently.’

An Ounce of Gold and Máxima Acuña Atalaya

Joseph Zárate

‘To end up with an ounce of gold – enough to make a wedding ring – you need to extract fifty tonnes of earth, or the contents of forty removal lorries.’