Granta

Carmen Maria Machado discusses her new memoir, In the Dream House, with Josie Mitchell. They discuss memory as architecture, formal experimentation, and making space for queer narrative. Carmen is the author of Her Body and Other Parties. You can read more of her work, including the new story ‘The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror’, from our Winter 2020 issue, here. 

Josie Mitchell talks to Momtaza Mehri about her pamphlet, Doing the Most with the Least, out with Goldsmiths Shorts. They discuss the value of self-interrogation, the significance of the Black Arts Movement and the limits to checking your privilege. You can read Momtaza’s poetry and essays on our website: https://granta.com/contributor/momtaza-mehri/And her recent essay in the Guardian, ‘Anti-racism requires so much more than checking your privilege’: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/07/anti-racism-checking-privilege-anti-blackness

Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation, talks to editor Josie Mitchell about her new novel, Weather. They discuss pre-apocalypse warnings, the doomers among us and the draws of prepper culture in a world gone mad. You can read an interview between Jenny and Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from an Apocalypse, on our website: https://granta.com/in-conversation-oconnell-offill/ 

Sandra Newman is the author of the novels The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, Cake, The Country of Ice Cream Star and four non-fiction books including the memoir Changeling. Her most recent novel The Heavens is published by Granta Books. She spoke to Lucy Diver about friendship, love, hope and how to write like an Elizabethan.

Maureen N. McLane reads from her book My Poets. My Poets begins its first chapter ‘proem, in the form of a Q&A’, which is what you hear at the beginning of the recording. The second part of the recording is from ‘My Elizabeth Bishop / My Gertrude Stein’, the fourth chapter in the book,

Kamila Shamsie is the author of seven novels and one book of non-fiction. Among many other accolades, Kamila is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. She joined us in the Granta offices for an interview about her new novel Home Fire, published by Bloomsbury. Home Fire was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

In this episode of the Granta podcast, Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers reads ‘False Blood’ by Will Self. Diagnosed with a rare blood condition, Self attends weekly ‘venesections’ (the modern-day equivalent of bloodletting) which inspire morbid thoughts on addiction and disease. The story can be found in full on our website: https://granta.com/false-blood/ Will Self is the author of numerous novels, most recently Phone. In 1993 he was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Max Porter is the author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award and the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize, and won the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize.

In this episode of the Granta podcast, Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland, reads Kathleen Collins’s short story, ‘The Uncle’, taken from the collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Kathleen Collins was a pioneer African-American playwright, film-maker, civil rights activist and educator. You can read more work by Kathleen Collins on our website: granta.com/whatever-happened-to-interracial-love/

In this episode of the Granta podcast, Josie Mitchell speaks with Andrea Stuart about her essay ‘Travels in Pornland’. They discuss the value of feminist porn, the importance of counter narratives and the challenges faced by feminist pornographers. The essay was first published in August 2016. You can read the essay in full on our website: https://granta.com/travels-in-pornland/

Luke Neima talks to George Saunders about his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. They discuss the pressures on Abraham Lincoln during the civil war, the art of creating distinctive historical voices, verbal improv and writing the afterlife.