Craft Stories I Wrote for the Devil

Thursday, June 27, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Ananda Lima, author of Craft Stories I Wrote for the Devil will be in conversation with Laura Laura Maylene Walter at Mac's on Thursday, June 27th at 7pm.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is forthcoming from Tor on June 18, 2024. Craft Stories is a surreal literary linked story collection revolving around the absurdity of our times, art, and writing, as well as a complex view of the immigrant experience. It is about a writer who sleeps with the Devil and sees him again and again throughout her life, as she writes stories about things that are both impossible and true. Early praise for the book describes it as “truly wondrous” (Kevin Wilson), “propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built.” (Julia Fine), and “an absolutely thrilling reminder that short stories can be the best kind of magic” (Kelly Link)

Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books, 2024), and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021, winner of the Hudson Prize). Her work has appeared in four chapbooks, including Amblyopia (Bull City Press), as well as publications such as The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Witness, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers and will be a Fall 2024 Flagler College Storytellers—Author in Residence. She has served as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program and currently serves as a Program Curator at Story Studio and as a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago.

"Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a beautiful work of alchemy: strange and familiar, experimental and narrative, topical and timeless, heart wrenching and wickedly funny. No story is without an eye to the larger political world--from Reagan Halloween costumes to Americans dispensed from vending machines--and yet no story forgets the vulnerable human hearts that exist within that world, just trying to survive and care for one another, day after day. These stories weave a world entirely their own and beckon you to stay with the charm of Lima's devil himself. I would have stayed forever. " --Gwen Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw

Laura Maylene Walter is the author of the novel Body of Stars (Dutton, 2021). Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, Slate, Literary Hub, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from Sewanee, Yaddo, Tin House, Ohio Arts Council, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Chautauqua Institution, the Ohioana Library Association, and Art Omi: Writers. She is the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library, where she hosts Page Count, a literary podcast.

Event address:1820 Coventry RdCleveland Heights, OH 44118Books:

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Hardcover)

By Ananda LimaTor Books - June 18th, 2024

Body of Stars: A Novel (Paperback)

By Laura Maylene Walter Dutton - April 5th, 2022