'If you can surprise yourself with your writing then it’s a lot more fun, and it’s a lot more interesting. That often involves creating characters you’ve never met or writing people that are not like you.’
Granta Magazine’s Luke Neima speaks to Rachel B. Glaser about being one of Granta’s 2017 Best of Young American Novelists.
They discuss the mystery of fiction, constructing stories out of Lego blocks, and the importance of surprising yourself with your writing.
Read Rachel’s story Day 4 in Granta 139.
Order a copy of her novel Paulina & Fran .
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘She sat sweating on the curb as her mother’s narrow face hovered over the parking lot like a hologram.’
‘When she reached her hand into his underwear, again she felt the turtle.’
‘Fiction is like those amazing robots that build other robots.’
Rachel B. Glaser shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘Confusion is the only natural response to the world, the alternative would be to just fall in with everyone else’s plans.’
‘We’ve got a lot of family friends but Thorsten has been coming round far too often recently and I wonder whether I shouldn’t tell her that sometime.’
