Granta

In the latest Granta Podcast we bring you an interview with Best of Young British Novelist, Naomi Alderman. Described by Rachel Seiffert as ‘someone who can do funny’, Alderman is the author of three novels: Disobedience, The Lessons and The Liars’ Gospel. She writes and designs computer games and is co-creator of Zombies, Run!, the best-selling iPhone fitness game and audio adventure. A professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University, she has been paired with Margaret Atwood in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Here, Alderman speaks to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her engagement with the world around her and the joys of writing to genre. ‘Soon and in Our Days’, which is published in the issue, is a new story.

Continuing a series of podcasts featuring our Best of Young British Novelists, today we bring you an interview with Taiye Selasi. Selasi was born in London to Nigerian and Ghanaian parents. She made her fiction debut in Granta in 2011 with ‘The Sex Lives of African Girls’, which was selected for Best American Short Stories in 2012. Her first novel, Ghana Must Go, was published in March 2013. Here she spoke to deputy editor Ellah Allfrey about her mother’s garden, Rachmaninov and learning to speak Italian.

Continuing a series of podcasts on our Best of Young British Novelists 4, today we bring you an interview with Evie Wyld. Wyld’s first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, which follows the lives of two men, Frank and Leon, who live decades apart but on the same wild coastline in Queensland, Australia, and was shortlisted for numerous awards and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel All the Birds, Singing, is excerpted in the issue. Here Wyld talks to online editor Ted Hodgkinson about why living in Peckham makes it easier to write about rural Australia, how memory informs her stories and why she can’t write a novel without at least one shark in it.

Best of Young British Novelist Adam Foulds, the author of two novels including Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze and the Costa Book Award winning narrative poem The Broken Word, spoke to John Freeman about how he wanted to be a scientist before discovering writing, his time working in a warehouse as a forklift truck driver, why his work often focuses on moments of existential crisis and the English teachers who encouraged his writing and were surprised to receive a hefty manuscript shortly afterwards.

James Lasdun talks about his most recent memoir, Give Me Everything You Have, about being stalked by a fomer writng student.

Colin Robinson reads from his memoir 'Paddleball' in Granta 122: Betrayal and discusses how an old brotherly friction re-emerged during a game in New York, and how gym culture has changed the way we see our bodies. 

The author of 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist', Mohsin Hamid, talks to John Freeman about the extract from his latest novel 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia', extracted in the new issue of Granta, Betrayal.

Granta New Poet Sean Borodale discusses his debut collection Bee Journal, shortlisted for he TS Eliot prize, with online editor Ted Hodgkinson.

Robert Olen Butler reads his story 'Banyan' and talks to Ted Hodgkinson about how memory can be like compost and why every story is a search for an identity.

Michel Laub reads from his story in Best of Young Brazilian Novelists and discusses trespassing and fathers.

Best of Young Brazilian Novelist Vinicius Jatobá and his translator Jethro Soutar on the challenges and intimacy of translation.

Deborah Levy spoke to Ted Hodgkinson about being shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her novel, Swimming Home.

Alison Moore talks to John Freeman about her debut novel, The Lighthouse, which was shortlisted for the Man Booke Prize. 

Jeet Thayil talks to Ted Hodgkinson abot his Booker shortisted novel, Narcopolis.

Booker shortlisted author Tan Twan Eng talks to John Freeman about The Garden of Eveing Mists.

D.T. Max on his biography: 'Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace'.

Claire Vaye Watkins on her debut story collection Battleborn, finding ritual in relationships and drawing inspiration from cartoons, mythology and Paul Simon.

Pete Stamm reads from his novel Seven Years and discusses imagining his characters as buildings and whether people, in life and in his fiction, can change.

Poets Jo Shapcott and George Szirtes on their poems inspired by Titian's interpetations of Ovid.

Sam Byers talks about being introduced in Granta 119: Britain, turning office life into fiction and writing women.