Ananda Lima Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Ananda Lima

In the letter to her readers, the author speaks to why she wrote Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil.

Dear Reader,

My name is Ananda, and I am the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. As I write this, I am thinking of you. You may have caught the bus, or the subway, or driven to work today. Maybe it was a cloudy day, but you had this moment, where there was a gap in the clouds, and the sun reached you. You may have closed your eyes for just one second and enjoyed the orange light behind your eyelids, the warmth on your skin. Maybe it is not the kind of thing you feel you need to tell people. But I am thinking of these very things as I write this: your life outside and your interior life. Our inner selves together across space and time.

Between us, Craft is a little about that. About the beautiful and strange magic that is writing and literature. About the outer world (crushing, terrifying, and beautiful) and the inner world, including small moments we may share only with ourselves. About meaningful connection.

Yes, it is also about a writer, who sleeps with the Devil at a Halloween party, and meets him again and again throughout her life as she writes the same stories you will ¬ nd in the book. It is about ghosts of people who are not dead yet, and people dispensed from vending machines, and excursions through hell, heaven, and purgatory. But it is also grounded in real life: love, loss, navigating the morality of our choices. It is strange, full of unexpected turns, but also full of heart.

I am so excited to know this book, my beloved weird little baby, is in your hands. It was a lot of work writing it, and most times, I was afraid and saddened by what I saw happening in the world as I wrote. But I also had so much fun. And my hope is that you have fun too. This book is my way to tell you that you are not alone in feeling unsure and unsettled living in this absurd world. And that we can make room for joy, laughter, and awe, even if they have to live alongside sorrow and uncertainty.

Thank you so much for being a reader, for joining me, and completing this loving spell. In Craft, the (ahem fictional) writer writes these stories for the Devil. But I wrote them for you.

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.