Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.
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‘Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.’
Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Born in Oxford in 1971, Rachel Seiffert divides her time between teaching and writing. She is the author of several novels, including Afterwards and The Dark Room, shortlisted for the 2001 Man Booker Prize. She was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.
More about the author →‘So, to summarise: witty, bold, and delicate too. Oh yes, and supremely able to turn a story.’
‘A story that starts with a bereavement: already I’m drawn in.’
Rachel Seiffert reads her work and talks to Granta about writing silences, the inescapability of history, the Troubles and learning to love her characters.
‘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.’
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
Robert Coover reads his short story ‘Vampire’ and discusses the quintessential English novel and the intersection between myth and the modern world.
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