Granta

In this edition of the Granta podcast we speak to Astrid Alben, who reads a selection from her book of poetry Plainspeak, discusses her work as a translator and as an editor of the interdisciplinary journal Pars, shares a poem by Valérie Rouzeau – translated from the French by Susan Wicks – and explains how she develops her poetic alter ego.

In our latest podcast, Joanna Walsh discusses the Irish Writing Boom with Sarah Davis-Goff of Tramp Press; Susan Tomaselli, editor of Gorse Journal; and Amy Herron of the Irish Writers' Centre. They touch on the culture and history of Ireland’s literary journals; short story culture; the fight against marketing departments and the work of fostering literary innovation.

Sally Rooney and Joanna Walsh: The Granta Podcast, Ep. 80 by Granta Magazine

Ireland has one of the world's most distinguished literary traditions. In Granta 135: New Irish Writing, we showcase contemporary Irish fiction, memoir, poetry and photography. For the launch of the issue, Granta and Foyles hosted Peggy Hughes, Sally Rooney, Lucy Caldwell and Sara Baume in a discussion about their work, the state of Irish writing and the place of technology in literature. Aud...

Last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, but the legacy of war and communism lives on in eastern Europe. In the new issue of Granta – No Man’s Land – Peter Pomerantsev writes about propaganda in Ukraine’s Donbas region, where pro-Russian activists battle with pro-Ukrainian, pro-democracy activists and Ukrainian nationalists, whilst Philip Ó Ceallaigh tells t...

Neel Mukherjee and Patrick deWitt discuss their books, Undermajordomo Minor and The Lives of Others, subconscious influence, the power of the exclamation mark and love.

Hiromi Kawakami is a novelist, haiku poet, literary critic and essayist. Her books include 'Manazuru, Pasuta mashiin yūrei' ('Pasta Machine Ghosts') and 'Sensei no kaban' ('The Briefcase'), published as 'Strange Weather in Tokyo' by Portobello Books in the UK. She was awarded the 1996 Akutagawa Prize for 'Hebi o fumu' (Tread on a Snake).H...

Ruth Ozeki is the author of 'My Year of Meats', 'All Over Creation' and 'A Tale for the Time Being', which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For Granta’s Japan issue, she wrote an essay on her grandfather: about a mysterious photograph she has of him and about the ways she feels linked to him across time. In the lates...

In the latest Granta podcast, Mark Gevisser and Jonny Steinberg discuss recent South African history, their personal relationship to Johannesburg, and their personal relationship to a divided city. Mark Gevisser is the author of 'A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream', published by Palgrave Macmillan in the UK, and by Jonathan Ball in South Africa...

Lindsey Hilsum is International Editor of Channel Four News and the author of ‘Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution’.In 1994 she was the only English-speaking Foreign Correspondent working in Rwanda when the genocide began. Her essay in the latest issue of Granta tells of her return to the country 19 years after the conflict. Here we talk about her time in Rwanda, Libya and how countries can...

In the latest Granta podcast, we’re joined by Juan Pablo Villalobos, author of 'Down the Rabbit Hole', which was nominated for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and, most recently, 'Quesadillas'.Here, Villalobos talks about parodying Mexican identity, the difficulty of translation and class struggle in Mexico. ‘The worst thing wasn’t being poor; the worst thing was having no i...

Eleanor Catton’s debut novel, The Rehearsal , was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and the Dylan Thomas Prize, longlisted for The Orange Prize and received a Betty Task award. Her second novel, The Luminaries , has been shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker prize.  Here, Granta Books editor Anne Meadows talks to Catton about opium sand gold, the ideas of the modern and the archaic, whe...

Granta speaks to Lina Wolff, author of the story collection 'Många människor dör som du' ('Many Pepole Die Like You') and the novel 'Bret Easton Ellis och de andra hundarna' ('Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs').  Wolff writes in Swedish, and her story in the issue is based in Spain. Here she discusses the tension she felt between a ‘Spanishness’ and ‘Swe...

In the latest Granta podcast, Saskia Vogel speaks to Sonia Faleiro, a contributor to the Travel issue and a reporter. Faleiro is the author of a book of fiction, The Girl, and one book of non-fiction, Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars. She talks about how her gender influences her work and how she started out as a reporter. She also discusses the way we tell stories a...

In the latest Granta podcast, Rachael Allen speaks to travel writer Robert Macfarlane. Macfarlane is the author of Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places and most recently, The Old Ways. Macfarlane talks about ‘Underland’, his essay in Granta 124: Travel, which sees him exploring the underground caves of Karst country, and the different approaches writers take to show landscape through language. ‘...

In the latest Granta podcast, Yuka Igarashi speaks to writer, journalist and activist Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is the author of numerous books about art, landscape, ecology and politics. They include A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; Infinite City, a book of 22 maps with nearly 30 collabora...

In the latest Granta podcast, Yuka Igarashi talks to A.M. Homes, the recipient of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for May We Be Forgiven. Homes is the author of the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers and Jack; the story collections The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know; and the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter (Granta...

On the latest Granta podcast we hear from George Saunders. One of the finest, funniest writers of his generation, he writes stories that pulse with outsized heart, crackle with the ad-speak and eek out the human story from the lives of theme-park workers and the subjects of strange drug tests that enhance libido and eloquence. His books include CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, Pa...

The final in our series of podcasts featuring the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Tahmima Anam. Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy, which chronicles three generations of the Haque family from the Bangladesh war of independence to the present day. Her debut novel, A Golden Age, was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. It was followed in 2011 by The Good...

Continuing our series of podcasts on the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Steven Hall. Born in Derbyshire, Hall’s first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, won the Borders Original Voices Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been translated into twenty-nine languages. ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’, in the issue, are excerpts from his upcoming second novel, The End of Endings. Here he spoke...

Continuing our series of podcasts on the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Jenni Fagan. Fagan’s critically acclaimed debut novel, The Panopticon, was published in 2012 and named one of the Waterstones Eleven, a selection of the best fiction debuts of the year. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her collection The Dead Queen of Bohemia was named 3:AM magazine’s Poe...

Continuing our Best of Young British Novelists we hear from Kamila Shamsie. Shamsie is the author of five novels. The first, In the City by the Sea, was published by Granta Books in 1998 and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her most recent novel, Burnt Shadows, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and translated into more than twenty languages. She is a fellow of the Roya...

Ross Raisin’s first novel, God’s Own Country, about a disturbed adolescent living in the Yorkshire Dales, won him the 2009 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Guardian First Book Award, a Betty Trask Award and numerous other prizes. His second novel, Waterline, about a former shipbuilder grieving the death of his wife in Glasgow, was published to critical acclaim in 2011. His short st...

Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Nadifa Mohamed. Mohamed was born in Somalia and moved to Britain in 1986. Here she spoke to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about how her first novel, Black Mamba Boy (which won the Betty Trask Award), was inspired by her father’s journey to the UK from Somalia, and how that process bro...

Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Sunjeev Sahota. Sahota was born in Derby and currently lives in Leeds with his wife and daughter. His first novel, Ours are the Streets, was published in 2011. ‘Arrivals’, in the issue, is an excerpt from The Year of the Runaways, his unfinished second novel, forthcoming from Picador...