In 1984, Granta published its first issue devoted to travel writing. Nearly forty years after that genre-defining volume, a new generation of writers from around the globe offers a new vision of what travel writing can be.

From Antarctica and the deserts of the US-Mexico border, to a Siberian whale-killing station and the alleyways of Taipei, these dispatches describe a world in perpetual motion (even when it is ‘locked-down’). To travel, we are reminded, is to embrace the experience of being a stranger – to acknowledge that one person’s frontier is another’s home.

Granta 157 is guest-edited by award-winning travel writer William Atkins.