It’s hard to find the right way to describe Ananda Lima‘s new book Craft: Stories I Wrote For the Devil. On the simplest level, it’s a collection of uncanny stories, many of them involving the act of writing and a series of ominous Satanic presences. But there are also — as the title implies — subtle links between all of the works in the collection, establishing this book as more than the sum of its (impressive) parts. I talked with Lima about the genesis of Craft, its relationship to her poetry, and the art of structure.

You now have two full-length books out — one prose, one poetry. Your chapbooks similarly cover both types of writing. To what extent do the two converge (or not) for you?

I think there is much wonderful writing that hovers in between fiction and poetry where the two meet in the mirror, prose poem, flash fiction or certain types of experimental fiction that is more sparse. In my case, I feel like my poetry and fiction are more separate. I love writing long skinny poems with short lines. My fiction is full of long sentences. So they don’t meet in the middle, but rather address different impulses for me. But there is a lot that crosses over. A very strong interest in sound, image, language. And also the presence of space for the text to reverberate off the page, a trust in the reader to connect things and experience more than what is literally on the page.

Structurally, I’m a little in awe of Craft: Stories I Wrote For the Devil. I’m aware that this is a collection and that the stories have appeared in other places, but this also feels like a thematically and narratively unified work in a way that few collections do. Was that framework always in place for these stories, or did that evolve over time?

The frame evolved after I had many of the stories and saw them as a collection. I felt the stories were talking to each other so much and the word “Craft” captured it perfectly in its multiple readings. The stories were often so meta, with writers writing stories within it. So it was as if they were drilling down into the meta thing. I thought it was wonderful to then move that repeating pattern up, out of the stories, to have the writer of the stories too, and in such a way that it almost moves out to the layer of the real writer with the suggestion of auto fiction in the book. It was super fun to play with that idea. And having the Devil be part of the frame complicated the auto fictional reading, and also fit into that double Craft theme. It was also just a lot of fun.

I love the effect of going from the first page of the collection to the first page of “Rapture,” and how the two both echo and contradict each other — which feels not unlike a kind of delirious cover version of itself. Where did the idea of that particular discontinuity come from? And what prompted the selection of 1999 and 1981 for the different versions of a writer’s encounter with the Devil?

The year 1981 came first in the inner story (Rapture). The music of that time, the atmosphere were important in writing that story. Also, there was Reagan’s inauguration that year. I wasn’t thinking of this very literally and systematically while writing it, but I had definitely been thinking of the link between Reagan’s policies and the sequence of events that brought us Trump, so 1981 just felt right for that story for multiple reasons. When I sat down to write the frame mirroring it, I didn’t know I was going to write 1999, but as I was about to write 1981, I paused and wrote 1999 and it made me smile. It was the write effect, that little disturbance between the layers. I loved the match and the discrepancy. 1999 was closer to what I know and experienced too. There was a sense of doom with Y2K, but it was such a benign doom compared to the fears now and even the earlier fears with the cold war. Or at least that is how it felt to me with my limited life experience at the time. I like the discrepancy and the progression in time. How it links the layers in time and how it separates their truths just a little bit. I liked how it resonates with the question of truth elsewhere in the book. It was one of those fun moments when I surprised myself and felt that the surprise was just perfect for the book.

Do you have a favorite Satanic bargain in fiction? 

One of my favorite devils is Woland from the Master and Margarita. I love his bargain with Margarita (which is mostly a gift). She hosts his Ball, greets his guests from hell, then gets a wish. She chooses to save a woman from her punishment. The devil grants her wish and gives her another one, and she is reunited with Master. I love how happy Margarita is for having met Satan and having become a witch. It is such a wonderful dizzying generous book. 

Speaking of things that left me floored: the structure of “Idle Hands,” where a story we never see is at the center of this story. Between the different voices and the story itself being offscreen, the logistics of writing this sound head-spinning. Was there one aspect of writing this that was especially challenging?

It was so challenging but also so fun to write that story. I was making myself laugh as I wrote it which was so fun. I had wanted to write a story that was not on the page, that happened off screen for a while. Then I started writing this story in workshop letters and realized there it was, the offscreen story I had wanted to write. It made it doubly fun and doubly challenging. The biggest challenge was to let go of the worry that this, workshop letters, was such a niche specific thing. Then after I let myself do what I wanted to do, it was making sure the voices were distinct and felt true (lots of POVs in this story!).  I did by letting these people who wrote the letters become full characters for me, even if their showing up on the story was brief. Then there was tracking the offscreen story which happens in a Walmart- like place. Giving just some hints of the story and letting the reader fill in gaps. It was so fun to work on both things at the same time.

Psychologically, did writing about a writer with an uncertain fate have any impact on you as you were writing and editing this? (I keep thinking of Grant Morrison having health problems after writing one of their The Invisibles characters into a physically taxing situation…)

Writing this book ended up really helping me. It could have gone another way, like you mentioned. But I think it is because the sadder, more difficult parts of it were already with me before the book. I was already experiencing those things. When I wrote the stories, it was wonderful to see that the sad and the fear was coming out mixed with humor, with awe. They existed together on the page. It felt good to find some joy and beauty there too.

Since Craft has been published, what’s been the most surprising reaction you’ve seen to it?

Having mostly had readers in a workshop context before, it has been magical to find those readers that are really your readers, that see the little things I had in there that I had thought were just for me, to see threads and links and resonances. This is a strange unconventional book, and beta readers in workshop are a tiny sample, so you don’t always find your readers there (which is okay too). I didn’t know how it would go. But it is just a wonderful feeling to see they are out there and they see it.

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

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