‘Imagine if an alien came to earth and asked, so how to you reproduce?’
We discuss Blue Ticket and the body horror of motherhood.
Sophie Mackintosh speaks to editor Josie Mitchell about her new novel, Blue Ticket. They talk about what it means to be pregnancy-adjacent, the bloodthirsty aspects of motherhood, and letting the body have what it wants.
You can find more fiction by Sophie Mackintosh on Granta.com, including ‘The Last Rite of My Body’ and ‘The Weak Spot’.
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘The monstrous years of my late teens lay lined up alongside the rest of my life like bullets in a gun.’
A story by Sophie Mackintosh.
‘Sebastián Bruno’s careful documentation of the communities of South Wales, is made up of images stark in their beauty.’
Sophie Mackintosh introduces photography by Sebastián Bruno.
‘I do wonder to what extent writing about motherhood is actually writing about being mothered’.
‘My ex-boyfriend dies, and we all gather to put our hands into his body.’ New fiction from Sophie Mackintosh.
‘After 2016 I’m done with sentimentality, and it’s hard to think of a less sentimental book than The Piano Teacher, objectively a masterpiece, subjectively a book that changed my life.’
‘We are real in an unreal reality, which we’re told is really real and that we’re actually unreal.’
