Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Glitches

John Gregory Dunne

‘I prefer not to speculate about what might have happened if I had not taken the ECG.’

Goat-Herd Errant: Jim Corbett and the American borderlands

William Atkins

‘The book is a manifesto for the revival of pastoral nomadism – leading goats from pasture to pasture and surviving on their milk and wild plants.’ William Atkins on Jim Corbett’s Goatwalking.

In Broad Daylight

Johanna Ekström

Johanna Ekström on memory and assault. Translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles.

In Search of Beauty: Blackness as a Poem in Saudi Arabia

Sulaiman Addonia

Sulaiman Addonia on the slow process of rediscovering the beauty of black skin after moving to Saudi Arabia as a child.

Julia Armfield | First Sentence

Julia Armfield

‘A first line is a threat, I think.’ Julia Armfield on the first sentence of her story ‘Longshore Drift’.

Lauren Aimee Curtis | Notes on Craft

Lauren Aimee Curtis

‘I think that if we knew, really understood, the reasons why certain stories take hold of us, we would have no need for fiction at all.’ Lauren Aimee Curtis shares her notes on the craft of writing.

Lazy Boy

Josh Cohen

‘I don’t see him staring back at me from the La-Z-Boy, I see me, I see a crystalline image of my own burned-out soul’

Little Nothings: Nabokov’s Road Notes

Elsa Court

Elsa Court on why Vladimir Nabokov immersed himself in the all-American world of roadside service stations.

Marie Darrieussecq | On Europe

Marie Darrieussecq

‘There is a Europe of life and a Europe of death, on the mass graves of which we perpetuate a dream.’ Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.

Mother and Son:
Life and Fate

Robert Chandler

‘Nothing made her happier than to sacrifice herself for her son’s happiness.’

Mushroom

Rob Doyle

Foraging for the infamous liberty cap mushroom in Dublin.

‘At the root of my interest in both drugs and art was the longing for an encounter with otherness.’

My Chequered Europe

Melitta Breznik

‘A Europe of different languages, landscapes and cultures, all of which have retained their characters.’ Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.

On Being French and Chinese

Tash Aw

‘We were trapped in a sort of double prison: by poverty in Europe, and by China and its expectations of us.’

On High Heels and Lotus Feet

Summer Brennan

Summer Brennan on high heels, foot-binding, and our ongoing performances of gender.