Ted Hodgkinson

A compilation of some of the best readings of 2011, including Binyavanga Wainaina reading from his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place, Robert Coover’s reading of his online story ‘Vampire’ and Granta debut contributor Taiye Selasi's reading of ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’.

Kyoko Nakajima & David Peace

‘When we talk about history, the dangers of embellishment, fabrication and wilful distortion are ever-present’

Aleksandar Hemon & Stuart Dybek

‘Do writers of fiction have to create a cosmology in order to exist?’

Saud Alsanousi & Ellah Alfrey

On Tuesday 23 April, in Abu Dhabi, Saud Alsanousi was announced winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Lina Wolff & Saskia Vogel

Lina Wolff on Dante, the artistic temperament and the tension she feels between a ‘Spanishness’ and ‘Swedishness’ when writing.

Tishani Doshi & Karthika Naïr

‘I have never felt it as a poet, and that is why I’m doubly grateful to dance, for having experienced the loneliness and the terror of the empty stage, but also, to have had that live connection.’

Karl Ove Knausgård & Sophia Efthimiatou

‘You are in the middle of your life and you think, how did I get here?’

Catherine Lacey & Louise Scothern

‘It's uncomfortable, at times, to be alive, so I see no reason why a voice in fiction shouldn't be also.’

Issue 42

Max Thomas Mehr & Regine Sylvester

‘It has nothing to do with the question of the foreigners. No one in Eisenhuttenstadt wants the foreigners here.’

Mavis Gallant & Jhumpa Lahiri

‘Useless chaos is what fiction is about.’

Pankaj Mishra & Aman Sethi

‘It is India’s turn to undergo social traumas that other countries have suffered in their pursuit of wealth and power.’

Julie Otsuka & Patrick Ryan

‘Using the ‘we’ voice allowed me to tell a much larger story than I would have been able to tell otherwise.’

Adrian Tomine & Francisco Vilhena

Tim Lott & Helen Gordon

‘Somehow by putting things into words you’re taking a situation that feels very out of control and creating a kind of illusion of control over it.’