Rachel Seiffert reads her work and talks to Granta about writing silences, the inescapability of history, the Troubles and learning to love her characters.
Photograph by Charlie Hopkinson
Ariel Saramandi on her experience teaching in a lycée in Mauritius.
Fiction by Sidik Fofana, set in the South.
Kevin Maxwell on the police in the UK.
Morgan Parker and Rachel Long in conversation.
Poetry by Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us Dead.
‘So, to summarise: witty, bold, and delicate too. Oh yes, and supremely able to turn a story.’
‘Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.’
‘A story that starts with a bereavement: already I’m drawn in.’
‘The bushes grow dense across the top of the drop, but Martin can just see through the leaves: young mother and son, swimming in the pool hollowed out by the waterfall.’
‘I had just come home from boarding school when Father took me aside and told me that Mother was up to her old antics, letting the whole family down, and that if she continued, we’d have to act.’
Jonathan Lethem on why Steve Erickson's Shadowbahn is the best book of a year to come.
