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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.’
Telling My Story
Stella Duffy
‘I wonder if they could all smell the queer on me, the queer in me, the burgeoning sexuality that I had no words for at the time.’
Cross-Dressers
Sébastien Lifshitz & Andrew McMillan
‘These images appear to give a glimpse of a ghost-self, a photographic negative of the heart.’ Andrew McMillan introduces photography curated by Sébastien Lifshitz.
Abscessed Tooth
Debra Gwartney
‘Silence allows me to pretend that this happened to someone else a long time ago, and not to me.’
