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Explore Essays and memoir

Court

Blake Morrison

‘One by one they’re led into the box. They swear their oath. They confirm their name, their employment, why they were where they say they were, what it was they saw.’

Terminus

Pedro Rosa Mendes

‘We hope that the copilot knows the terrain well. That his mask of youth conceals the face of a seasoned veteran of war. That he knows the minefields because he helped plant them.’

A Mischief of Rats

Joanna Kavenna

‘They slept curled together in a hammock, little scraps of fur, hearts beating madly.’ Joanna Kavenna on her pet rats, Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love.

The Great Israeli novel of War and Doubt

Anne Meadows

Granta editor Anne Meadows writes about Khirbet Khizeh, the great Israeli novel of war and doubt.

Lisa Moore | Notes on Craft

Lisa Moore

‘I wanted to explore what a “likeness” is, and how the act of capturing a person through a portrait might compare to writing a character.’

Moose Magic

Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht on a chance encounter with a moose in Wyoming, for Granta 142: Animalia

A Not-So-Pretty History of Pet Care

Daniel Magariel

‘One day after the next I would figure out what was needed, learn from my mistakes, pay attention to what worked.’

Cows

Adam Nicolson

‘All in it together but not in it together at all.’

Large Black Rooster

Daniyal Mueenuddin

‘Early one morning in the month of June, someone ran over a huge black rooster on County Road W in Wisconsin hill country.’

The Bible As Literature, Literature As Scripture

Stuart Kelly

'Literature and literary criticism took me away from the Church as a teenager, and literature and literary criticism brought me back to it later.'

Abuse, Silence, and the Light That Virginia Woolf Switched On

April Ayers Lawson

When Virginia Woolf was thirteen, she was abused by her half-brother George Duckworth. No one believed her - not even her biographers. April Ayers Lawson on Woolf's abuse, and her own.