Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Interviews

Louis de Bernières | Interview

Anita Sethi

‘At four o’clock in the morning, when Louis de Bernières has lines of poetry repeating in his head which won’t stop gnawing away, he writes them down.‘

Julie Klam | Interview

Julie Klam & Marian Brown

‘I’m successful? I can’t wait to call my mother!’

Anthony Doerr | Interview

Anthony Doerr & Patrick Ryan

‘The natural world is full of records and erasures.’

The Game of Evenings

Adolf Hoffmeister & James Joyce

For Bloomsday, James Joyce and Adolf Hoffmeister argue about a Czech translation of Finnegans Wake in a rare and intimate interview from 1930.

Evan James Roskos | Interview

Evan James Roskos & Roy Robins

‘There is a view of American men presented by the media – of men as boorish, insensitive, emotionally immature – that manages to underscore various stereotypes that I feel fiction and poetry have a duty to dismantle.’

Catherine Chung | Interview

Catherine Chung & Ollie Brock

‘I think my interest in mathematics was that of a writer: I was always trying to translate it back into a story.’

John Burnside | Interview

John Burnside & Rachael Allen

‘Marx said the forest only echoes back what you shout into it – and this is very often true, perhaps more often than not, but I think the poet’s task is to suggest that it needn’t be.’

Ben Lerner | Interview

Ben Lerner & Ted Hodgkinson

‘I have no memory of intending to write a novel.’

Bruce Chatwin | Interview

Bruce Chatwin & Michael Ignatieff

‘We have everything here, but I always wish I was somewhere else. It's a condition that makes one very difficult to live with.’

Daniel Alarcón | Interview

Daniel Alarcón & Helen Gordon

‘The strangest parts of a story are not necessarily the fictional elements.’

The National Language

Uzma Aslam Khan & Aamer Hussein

‘It gives me two languages to play with in my writing. It also gives me two languages to love and curse in.’

Nick Dybek | Interview

Nick Dybek & Ted Hodgkinson

‘Maybe it’s what draws so many writers to the adolescent perspective; during that time, imagination and experience are in a death match.’