‘It was a victory to arrive home. Ma Beeda always celebrated with a strong cup of tea.’
Beeda stood on the school veranda and watched the last pupils disappear down the road. He thought of this as the road swallowing pupils. The day’s climax, a question-and-answer session, came back to him and he heard his voice rise to fill the classroom:
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
‘I should warn you, she said, ketchup on her chin, on the back of her hand. I like to have sex a lot.’
Fiction by Kathy Stevens.
‘Who needs a bed? he said one night. He was drinking beer out of an old dirty pickle jar.’
New fiction by Edward Herring.
‘That smile the President has – it was just the same then as it is now.’
Fiction by Rebecca Sollom.
An excerpt from On Chapel Sands, which has recently been shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020.
