Bringing together these pieces about fathers and fatherhood for my first issue as Granta’s editor has been both exhilarating and very instructive. Apart from the deep satisfaction of seeing writers develop and refine their ideas and settle on the most fruitful way of expressing them, sometimes end…
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‘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.
‘In 1979, when Bill Buford introduced his first issue of Granta, a penetrating, bravura survey of American fiction, he proclaimed his efforts to be ‘a kind of energetic failure’.’
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘It’s a paper bag filled with pastries. Chicken turnovers.’
An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
‘I see this everywhere. The creativity, resourcefulness and incredible talent for improvisation in Egypt.’
Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
Space posters were ‘visually stunning representations of the promises of the Soviet state’.
