Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Consolation Puppies

Amy Butcher & Martha Park

A graphic essay on dogs, adoption and Donald Trump.

Common Cyborg

Jillian Weise

‘I’m nervous at night when I take off my leg. I wait until the last moment before sleep to un-tech because I am a woman who lives alone’

Breasts: A History

Krys Malcolm Belc

‘My breasts are shrinking. As my fat redistributes it settles in my belly and leaves my chest.’

Masculinity Is Leaving The Male Body

D. Mortimer

‘If we’re gonna imagine this beautiful queer paradise what form does a man take?’

Of Donuts I Have Loved

Miranda Dennis

‘Krispy Kremes melt at the touch, are tender and loving, are used by my family to perform a wholeness we do not always feel’

Notes on Craft

Paul Dalla Rosa

‘I feel like I’m haunting an empty building, inert, waiting for each room to burst into flames.’

After

April Ayers Lawson

‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.

A Few Words about Fake Breasts

Nell Boeschenstein

‘You repeat this over and over. You pinch your nipples harder. Then harder and harder still. You twist them. You dare them to say Mercy. You stare into your own eyes that are watching you from the mirror.’

A Summer of Japanese Literature

Dan Bradley

From manga to crime fiction, contemporary literature to Nobel-Prize-winning classics, here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on

Murasaki’s Paper Trail

Martin Puchner

Martin Puchner on how Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court, manage to write the first great novel of world literature.

Fred Pearce | Notes on Craft

Fred Pearce

‘For a hack like me, book-length meta-journalism is both a luxury and a challenge. I cannot hide my own views over 100,000 words, even if I want to.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

Editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 144: genericlovestory.

I Bite My Friends

Fernanda Eberstadt

‘The Easter Parade is winding down, when I spot Him. Her. Them. The Apparition.’

On Paris Hilton and Other Undead Things

Brittany Newell

‘What sex tapes offer, on a hauntological level, is an impossible closeness to that which is neither dead nor alive.’