granta
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The Pause That Does Not Refresh
You hear a lot about hot flashes, but hot flashes are the least of it, totally inconsequential in every way: you get as hot as a steam iron at odd moments – so what? The media would have you believe…
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This Week in Short Fiction
This is the week of fantastical fiction, of the weird and the magical, of re-imagining fairy tales and urban legends, of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. On Tuesday, a new edition of Angela Carter’s seminal 1979 story…
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Lagos, Revisited
Alexis Okeowo expounds on Lagos for Granta—where it’s been, where they’re going, and why it’s future, our future, is dependent on its progress.
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Writing After 40
If the lists are to be believed, the only good new writers are under 40. It’s not just Buzzfeed, but also the New Yorker, Granta, and others who publish lists of great new—and young—authors. Joanna Walsh takes issue with this…
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If It’s Not One Thing, It’s A Mother
My mother stood before me in her quilted bathrobe, dark hair held back in a ponytail, her eyes sunken, grey. I felt like the narrator of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who, startled out of sleep, opens his eyes to behold the…
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You Don’t Finish Anything, You Just Turn Away
Over at Granta, Sam Lipstye and Diane Cook chat about spontaneity, artistic permanence, and how time travel’s actually a bit of a burden: I would love to make minor adjustments to most of the sentences I’ve put out into the…
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Profile of “Pangaeic” Writer David Mitchell
Fans of Cloud Atlas, a sextet of sweeping stylistic range, know well that Granta-recognized author David Mitchell has a knack for mimesis. But they may not know that he is also “uncommonly good at imitating nonhuman noises.” In anticipation of…
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This Week in Short Fiction
The news of Michael Brown’s death cannot be ignored. When one of our young people dies from shots fired by a police officer, there will be sadness and confusion. There will inevitably be questions, and questions left unanswered will lead…
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Interrogating Adrian
Over at Granta, Francisco Vilhena interviews Adrian Tomine, the artist and illustrator responsible for bringing us Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, and any number of illustrations for the New Yorker. Tomine riffs on the origins of his stories, landing a job in…
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“Firecrackers and Wedding Music”
Granta has a stirring excerpt from Maria Choudhuri’s forthcoming memoir Beloved Strangers, about growing up in the capital of Bangladesh and then moving to New York. The excerpt starts to explore the topic of her parents’ arranged marriage and what it…
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Notable NYC: 11/9–11/15
Saturday 11/9: The Comic Arts Festival features guest speakers, indie publishers, and self-published comic zines. Mt. Carmel Church -and- The Knitting Factory, 11am to 7pm, free. Colum McCann reads from his novel Transatlantic (June 2013), presented by Community Bookstore. Brooklyn…
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A Computer Game Comes to Life
“I discovered Hitler the summer I turned twelve,” Michael Clune writes of the summer he spent playing the computer game “Beyond Castle Wolfenstein” in his Granta essay, “World War II Has Never Ended.” As the summer progresses, history is made and…