Thomas Meaney

Based out of Berlin, Thomas Meaney has been the editor of the prestigious literary magazine Granta since 2023 and serves on the editorial committee of New Left Review. He completed a PhD in History at Columbia, has been awarded the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism, and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the London Review of Books. The Granta Berlin office where he works might be located in a neighborhood central to the German literary scene, but the magazine itself appeals to a much wider and more adventurous audience, eager to discover literary gems from all over the world through special issues dedicated to China, India, etc. The magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as a student publication and became renowned for publishing early works by writers such as A.A. Milne and Sylvia Plath. In the 1970s, it experienced a downturn only to be relaunched in 1979 as the literary quarterly it is today. Ever since then, Granta’s Best of Young lists have been spotlighting the most promising young authors that will rise to prominence and define the future of literary fiction. The magazine’s predictions have been so prescient that the lists now function as barometers for an ever-changing literary landscape. Especially the past few years, under Meaney’s direction, the magazine has been re-energized by a fresh focus on politically engaged essay writing that rejects the frictionless language often used by mass media and cultivates a more restless readership. As Meaney himself puts it, “great literature is political, but not in the sense that is commonly meant: literature is most enduring, not when it is most saturated with political ideals, but exactly when it is not, and because it is not, it is”.