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| Read Michael Salu, Granta's head designer, on the inspiration for the cover image. |
The lovely people at Granta invited me to the launch event of their magazine's 115 edition. It was a charming occasion where I met a number of the talented team involved in putting the new edition together. Entitled The F Word, its a record of writers views of feminism. Does it go without saying that this is also collection of writing about men? While all the essays, stories, poems, memoirs and the photo essay are all by women, what we actually have is a discussion of all kinds of relationships, with mostly powerful, but in some instances powerless men.
I do have to say that my copy of the magazine was free, but I'm under no obligation. In any case I regularly buy Granta magazine. Just recently, because of this blog, I have been thinking about publishers. I've been wondering about the brands of publishers, and I'm curious, because largely I don't imagine that readers buy publishers. I believe that they buy the authors. Think about it, how many publishers can you list? Penguin, Virago, Faber, Persephone and Granta. I have a sense of what they are about, but as for the others… I have no real sense of them. But I've a wide variety of their efforts on my bookshelves and I'm sure that you do too.
Granta's brand is rather brilliant, it looks nothing like a magazine, but you know that you are going to be introduced to new writers and re-introduced to one's you already know. From recent edition's I've been pleased to be introduced to the work of Colin Grant, Dinaw Mengestu and Mark Gevisser. Re-introductions have included brilliant short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Brian Chikwava. Granta's full of wonderful connections to all kinds of writers and new writing.
The introduction in this new edition is to the work of Taiye Selasi. Her short story, The Sex Lives of African Girls considers how you acquire womanly survival skills if you grow up unloved and motherless. Told entirely through the eyes of an unhappy eleven year old, it takes you through the lives of an Upstairs Downstairs style household in contemporary Accra. I don't think that I'm explaining it too well at all, but I'd really like you to get a copy of Granta to read this story - if you read nothing else in Granta for this story alone, it would be £12.99 well spent,
Edwidge Danticat's Hot-Air Balloons is what I'd consider to be my re-introduction in this edition. This short story is primarily about the effects of selfish parenting and despotic governance. It takes you from the lush self-centred lifestyles of wealthy academics in the US to the horror of the lives of women in the under resourced rape centres of Haiti. The story is fiction, but you know that what Edwidge is writing about is not fiction.
I think that the writing in this edition is so brilliant, that I'm going to mention a some pieces and author's I'd not normally reference on this blog. AS Byatt's No Grls Alod, Insept Mom is hilarious; Caroline Moorhead's A Train in Winter made me cry. And the think pieces by Laura Bell and Helen Simpson are just so thoughtful, really wonderfully elegant writing. The Rachel Cusk piece made me squirm and cringe with embarrassment. Terribly sad issues spilled out in public. Rachel's a completely honest writer, who tells us about the disintegration of her marriage in an essay called Aftermath. I was at the Granta event at Foyles bookshop where she described how she decided to write about this difficult episode in her life. I found that I could not listen to it again on the Granta website, but the conversation with Taiye Selasi is there too - listen to it here.
In the end the role of publishers is to make you want to buy more books and to hopefully, want to read more. That's most certainly what Granta's about. There are also features on the website that encourage you to think further about the topic of the issue, and Hannah Gersen's piece about her most favoured feminist book, made me buy her choice - Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother.
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