Granta | The Home of New Writing

Explore Essays and memoir

Sympathy | State of Mind

Rachel Hewitt

‘Before motherhood, I had not thought much about sympathy.’

The Fashion of Kathy Acker

Chris Kraus

An extract from Chris Kraus’s new biography, After Kathy Acker.

Chris Kraus on Kathy Acker

Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus discusses her new biography, After Kathy Acker, which looks at the life and work of the artist twenty years after her death. 

Comfort Woman

Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse on her work as a private investigator. ‘An escort service was providing prostitutes for football recruits, directly solicited by the university.’

Hallelujah! A Brief History of Bombing People

Ben Mauk

Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.

Desire | State of Mind

Andrea Stuart

‘My burgeoning sense of my own attractiveness, so fragile and recently developed, withered in this less than fertile ground.’

Possessed | State of Mind

Jules Montague

‘I am neither fully awake nor entirely asleep. In fact, I wonder if I am even alive.’

Pop-Up People

Peter Pomerantsev

We are living through a period of pop-up populism, where each political movement redefines ‘the Many’ and ‘the People’, where we are always reconsidering who counts as an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’, where what it means to belong is never certain.

Nothing to be afraid of | State of Mind

Anil K. Seth

‘Life in the first person is both magical and terrifying. But it is circumscribed.’ Anil K. Seth on the ties between our brains, bodies and consciousness.

Soon Comes Night

Ekow Eshun

‘I’d become so used to hiding away inside myself I couldn’t respond with any spontaneity. I was stuck in the shallows of my emotions.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

‘What’s in a state of mind? How do we describe emotions, or the complex relationship between individuals and the state?’

Notes on a Suicide

Rana Dasgupta

‘The problem was that, for the most part, it did not matter how widely broadcast your discontent was: no one cared.’

Rana Dasgupta on digital celebrity and a suicide in the banlieues of Paris.