Photograph © Hasnain Kazim
A compilation of some of the best readings of 2011, including Binyavanga Wainaina reading from his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place, Robert Coover’s reading of his online story ‘Vampire’ and Granta debut contributor Taiye Selasi's reading of ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’.
Photograph © Hasnain Kazim
‘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.
Ted Hodgkinson is the previous online editor at Granta. He was a judge for the 2012 Costa Book Awards’ poetry prize, announced earlier this year. He managed the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, the affiliated Gregor Von Rezzori Literary Prize and still serves as an advisor. His stories have appeared in Notes from the Underground and The Mays and his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He has an MA in English from Oxford and an MFA from Columbia.
More about the author →George Saunders talks about allowing his characters access to goodness, why he avoids ‘auto-dark’ in his stories, and the death of David Foster Wallace.
Helen Oyeyemi speaks to Ted Hodgkinson about the joys of writing from a male perspective, magic in her work, and how as a girl she wrote alternate endings to the classics.
Colin Robinson reads from his memoir ‘Paddleball’ in Granta 122: Betrayal and talks to Ted Hodgkinson about how an old brotherly friction re-emerged during a game in New York, and how gym culture has changed the way we view our bodies.
Here Deborah Levy spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about why as she wants to resist anything resembling a comfort zone and why writing fiction is about ‘finding reasons to live’.
Jeet Thayil talked to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about being shortlisted for the Booker, the images of Christ woven into his novel Narcopolis and an unexpected digression on Blade Runner.
Photographer Michael Collins on his mother’s life following a series of strokes.
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