How to Marinate Stories With Deep and Surprising Emotional Resonances
Ananda Lima discusses crafting "Antropófaga," her story that finds humor in even the darkest politcal horrors
In my previous post, I wrote about Ananda Lima’s wonderfully imaginative short story “Antropófaga,” in which a Brazilian-American woman mourning a miscarriage becomes addicted to eating tiny Americans she can buy from a vending machine at her workplace, even though they make her kind of sick.
The story appears in Lima’s excellent collection Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, which comes out in paperback on June 17, 2025.
Lima was generous enough to sit down with me and share her process for slowly marinating stories with deep yet surprising emotional resonances, including finding humorous ways to engage with the saddest political horrors. I hope you enjoy our conversation below as much as I did!
Preety Sidhu: You mentioned in another interview that what came to you first with this story, “Antropófaga,” was the first line: “She devoured tiny Americans that slid out of a vending machine.” Am I remembering that correctly? What were you doing when that line struck you and what questions did you ask yourself next?
Ananda Lima: I started writing that story because there was a call somewhere for a one-line story. I was trying to come up with lines and that line came, so it was very much the first one. I was like, oh no, this is not a one-line story. But I was very much trying to come up with a line.
How I started writing it was that line, but a lot of the images and things that ended up in the story were floating around already. That was my way in.
PS: Which images were already on your mind?
AL: The biggest one was the plastic blankets. It ended up being a very sad but also funny story. I was very sad at that time because of the pictures of the kids in the detention centers, they had those metallic blankets. That was in my mind a lot, and it really made me upset, for the regular reasons.
When you’re a writer or poet, you cling to the images, so that blanket stayed with me. I’m also a runner. I’m not really a runner, but I run. Sometimes you get given those blankets as a runner. So that picture of that blanket really stayed with me.
I didn’t know that it was going to come out this way, but when the packaging came out like the Doritos, I was like, oh it’s coming out in this story.
That was floating around, and just what was happening in the country at that time, it ended up coming through this story. I didn’t know as I began writing that this would be the story that had it.
PS: Once you had that vending machine line in place, what did you ask yourself next? What did you need to know next, to start writing this story?
AL: Different stories are different, but for the most part, I’m actually reading the story for the first time as I’m writing it, and going, oh this is where I go.
I followed the sound of the story. That first paragraph, I pretty much didn’t know what was coming out until I wrote it. Once I wrote it, I was like, oh okay. There’s a certain humor, there’s something kind of scary. I really just went with it.
The themes of the story were very present in my mind, but I didn’t know exactly where we were going. Especially the first two or three pages, I was just like, oh okay, this is what’s happening.
Once you have those first pages, you have an idea of the universe and the kind of thing that is going to happen, and you’re more oriented.
PS: One of the things that impressed me so much is that elements of this story seem to echo other elements of this story in really precise ways. For example: the reason Béia is eating tiny vending machine Americans that make her kind of queasy is because she lost a baby in a miscarriage—who we can think of as a tiny, would-be American—but the reason she conceived in the first place is because, they joke, her stomach has become Americanized, sensitive to Brazilian food, and she vomits up her birth control. The reason she even had this pregnancy to mourn goes back to her body’s differing responses to American and Brazilian food, which comes up again in other ways as well. Even the idea of trying for another baby in the cold New Jersey winter feeling artificial and repugnant in a way that echoes vending machine food; it’s so precise, the way these themes seem refracted in even the tiniest details.
As you’re coming up with these tiny details, how consciously are you looking for echoes of things that are already in the story? What does that process look like? How did these things fall into place and get refined as you work?
AL: My becoming more mature as a writer was learning how these things work for me. The way things work best for me is, all these disparate things—the body, the horror of the situation we were going through, the fact that these were children (the children are just the forceful image, it matters when it’s an adult too!)—I collect these images, and these feelings and juxtapositions. I know that there’s something there, that I’m going to write about all this, because it’s moving me inside.
I collect these things, and I think about them, and I live them. That is the work that I do off the page.
But I don’t see what is going to be on the page when I’m not writing. I’m not putting them together and going, hey, this really echoes with this.
I let them marinate for a long time, and then when I’m writing it’s less conscious.
That work of letting it marinate and noticing what is moving me and what’s important to me, that is the work I do off the page. Connecting them and how they come up, it happens as I’m writing.
Writing is a way of thinking about these things. That’s the beauty of what happens. For me, if I work this way, the connections will be deeper. They’re expected after they’re there, but they will be less expected beforehand. They’ll feel like, oh that’s right, this echoes that. But they won’t be something that before, either as a reader or as a writer, I know that they’re going to come out this way.
Respecting that I’m a marinator and not a planner really works for me. When it comes out, because I’ve been thinking about these things, I can see the echoes. Like the ingestion and the body and the miscarriage and the situation with the vending machine, they speak to each other so nicely. It works better if I don’t plan it and let it come out organically.
After it’s there, I’m like, oh, okay, I can see these things. Let me make sure they’re visible and they’re there. But it’s not super conscious when I’m doing it the first time.
PS: I like the word “marinator” a lot, because in writing we’ll hear you might a “planner” or a “panster.” It’s either totally random or totally planned in advance. And this feels like it’s subconsciously sort of planned, before consciously manifesting.
Do you have specific things that you like to do, like go for a walk. Activities during which you’re like, this is my marinating time?
AL: Yes, I love walking, a lot of things come out then. Either walking or running (very slowly), those are good. Especially if I have audio, an audio book or a short story, I will very often stop listening to the story and ideas will come.
What I became much better at over time is noticing when something moves me. I think that’s the biggest, most productive thing I can do as a writer.
Some writers are like, oh I have to write every day at 5:00 AM or something like that. I don’t worry about any of that. For me, the most important and productive thing is to observe myself: I don’t know why, but these two things together are funny or interesting or mysterious to me. Something is productive about noticing that. If I sit and I have nothing to write, I think: what are the cool things I’ve been thinking about? If I bring them to mind, that’s going to give me the “feel” to write.
Walking, running, but also just living, being cautious. When you read something, when you watch something, when you’re walking around: oh, that really moves me, that was really interesting internally. Taking note of that is really good.
PS: When I notice how closely everything, again, echoes that very first line—the tiny Americans, eating, ingesting the food, all those—it feels like a palette, like an artist’s palette. That you’re keeping it within a certain range. When there are questions that you had to think more explicitly about, okay, what am I going to put here, did you try to keep it within a certain palette?
AL: With this story, the main plot things, they were so natural. Even the later thing with the hands. They were very natural, which is not always the case. The throughline came out very organically. I feel like because I had sat with those things for so long, my subconscious came out with a good first version of it.
The thing that I had to do most, because of the tone or palette you observed, is: I had more of the roommate before, because I was interested in that relationship, and I had to pull back on it. This was not fitting with the main thread. It was exactly what you mentioned, about the palette and tone of the story. It was pulling away from that, so I had to cut back on it.
But I didn’t have as much to grow. Like, oh I have a little gap here, what should I do next? Which happens with other stories. With this story, it came out having the major thread shaped in a very similar version to the final draft.
PS: Were there other outtakes? Things you put in that didn’t quite work so you took them out again?
AL: The big trajectory was there early. But with the little Americans, there was a bit of, okay, what is repeating? I had to organize which ones would appear, where, and how many times for a specific type. I had to do a bit of pruning there. Let’s move this guy here, let’s not have this one. The “who’s coming out of the machine” situation. That and the roommate was most of it, for the shaping.
PS: Do you remember any tiny Americans who didn’t make the cut?
AL: There is a guy with a MAGA hat, he appears once. I had two appearances of that kind of character and I thought, if I have just one, it’s more effective, the whole thing. Instead of distributing the power of that moment, I condensed it by not having that second. I think they wanted to be one, it was just me as I was writing it that didn’t know yet.
PS: I’m curious about other elements that might have gone through different iterations before they were refined into the final versions we see on the page. Like the secondary characters, the co-workers, the ex-boyfriend, or even the choice of a hospital, specifically, as a background. The metallic packaging that, as we’ve mentioned, gets echoed a couple different ways. I’m curious if these things evolved, hit the page one way and then got refined as you go.
AL: It’s very different in every story. This one in particular—it’s not always like that at all—it came more ready. Because of all that pre-work that I had no idea was happening, when I was working on it without knowing it. A lot of these things came very close already, and those other things were minor. That’s not always true. Many, many good stories out there, they have to be played around with a lot. This one came with this trajectory very close by.
One thing about the hospital, once I had the two first lines, and I thought of the vending machine—I feel like the visuals always help so much, if you see where this takes place. I saw a vending machine, and the setting of a vending machine is usually a place with not many windows, inside, you can hear that buzzing kind of a situation, and the lights. And then immediately I saw the floor of the hospital. The setting took care of itself very early because of where I saw that first scene. The setting just followed from that.
PS: That’s always the dream, when your brain is just doing it for you and gifting it to you.
AL: The tone of the story is more removed. Not like a fairy tale, but this alternate reality thing where it doesn’t demand as much explanation as another tone would. That helps too, because I didn’t have to be bogged down with a lot of things that I may have in a different mode of storytelling.
It’s good that it came like that because this is the story that a lot of people love, and other people, they’re like, oh that’s not for me.
My editor at Tor is amazing. I love her so much. She’s the best person for this book. But this is the one where she was like: I don’t know. I don’t have much to tell you about this story. Other stories, she would say: hey, have you thought about this, have you thought about that? This one was more like: I don’t have any comments. So it was helpful that it had its shape already.
PS: I’m glad that you mentioned fairy tales because I took a fairy tales class in my own MFA program, and I remember learning that if things are “flat” or archetypal in a fairy tale world, it’s really an invitation for readers to project their own emotions onto that. You’re able to enter the story and fill in a lot of the emotions yourself.
I was thinking about that in connection with the Fox News parts, interestingly enough. You weave political depth into this story by having Fox News playing, very much in the background. They’re talking about “anchor babies,” they’re showing the children in the metallic blankets in the detention centers.
Béia’s not having very explicit thoughts about most of this. She’s not consciously having a narration in her head that’s responding to the news. She’s more absorbing it, having emotional or visceral reactions. That’s where this gives us as readers more room to imagine, to feel ourselves into the gap of what she might be thinking, how close to home this might be hitting for her. Without the story becoming a story of Béia’s immigration journey, or something like that, which would have been a very different tone of story.
Can you speak more to how you were thinking about the politics, and keeping it to the background noise of her life? And then thinking about what impact that background noise was having on her. How did you think about pulling all of that together?
AL: It’s funny because there are stories that are much more explicitly engaging with this kind of thing. But emotionally, this is the one that came most closely out of what was politically happening in the world. I was so upset, I was so sad. Worse than being upset is being sad.
Another thing that I’ve discovered over the years is that, there is certain work that is very important and good, that is not for me because I’m no good at it. One of them is op-ed writing, the essay that says we should do this because of that, or this is terrible because of that. That is so important and good, especially when it’s well done. I appreciate it, but I know I’m not the person to write that, because I’m just not good at it. I’m very grateful that this work is out there, either in the nonfiction or the more directly engaged fiction.
For me, the world is out there and smart discussion of it is out there. I work from the view that I don’t need to say everything here, because someone else is doing a better job of saying things directly. I leave that up to them.
I am thinking about these things, for sure, when I write these stories, and they’re affecting me. But I need to think outside of the op-ed, because that’s what I’m better at, and let these things come out in a way that is not at all what I would expect from the get go.
I was very upset, very sad. After writing it, it feels like I have thought about this, and there’s something new about this for me. When I’m writing, I’m usually not trying to say anything, I’m not trying to make a point, but I am trying to be true to the feelings of living in this time, which is horror and fear. I think these things make it into the story.
That TV is actually what was scaring me into the story, and it stays in the background. The position allows people to think in a way that is a different part of your thinking. There’s the op-ed thinking, which is important. But this more emotional feeling is also helpful.
It was such a great experience writing this story, because I was so sad and upset. But when I’m writing, there’s this “funny” coming through. When I was talking to people, it wasn’t coming through. But when I wrote it, I found the “funny,” which was very helpful for me. I’m not ignoring the things. It’s very much there, the bad horrors. But I’m also finding the fun and funny in it, so it also taught me something, writing the story.
It comes very organically. I’ve learned about myself that if I don’t try to go for it, it’s going to come in a way that’s not something I’m needing somebody else to do a great job of already.
PS: Both Béia and someone who looks like they could’ve been the child she lost eventually come out of the vending machine, which presumably vends only Americans. Is this something that she’s learning about herself, or thinking through her own Americanness, the degree that she identifies as an American? How were you thinking about having them appear as Americans?
AL: When I started writing the little Americans, I didn’t know that this was going to happen, but it’s an emotional rightness. The first couple, they’re very stereotypical, and that felt funny and right. Then as I go, I’m like, we need to complicate this. I’m not thinking this in words, it’s emotional. This needs to complicate, we are all part of this. I’m following what feels right, in the emotion and complication.
That’s how the other characters come, but they also come very organically. That’s why it’s so lovely to be able to think in fiction and think in poetry. The right image comes out to say what you want to say, without you dictating the image. The image goes and you follow, and it’s the right thing.
The stereotypical thing is going on, the Fox News is going on, all of this is going on. But also, we are all a part of it. Sometimes we need to simplify things when we are talking about stuff, but it’s very hard to discern who is “us” and “them” in reality. We’re all in a continuum and mess of the situation.
Who is the hero, who is the monster? Some things are clear, but for most of us in the middle, it’s like, am I doing enough, am I giving up enough? All this stuff is very complicated. The fact that she’s a part of this mess ended up being very right. The horror, there are some things that are very visible and easy to discern, but most of it is very difficult.
PS: I love that twist. Because, if she wasn’t there, if there weren’t some sympathetic ones, you could just think, argh, those tiny Americans, you just want to crunch their heads off. But she can’t have a uniform reaction to them without also incorporating herself into that.
Since this one came organically, once it did start hitting the page, how long did it take you to get it to its final form?
AL: For this story, which is not always the case, I got to a decent draft quickly. Then there’s tweaking that kept going. When it goes from the journal to the book, there’s more edits.
It was quick for a couple reasons. One is that I was marinating and, just organically, the plot was in a good place. Also because I wrote it when I had some time to write. The first draft happened over a summer, early fall. That particular summer, I had time to write. I’m very slow, but it took me a few months. That’s quick for me.
PS: I’m curious about your process more generally. I’m always curious about the physicality of writing: do people like to write in notebooks, or on certain apps, or certain devices, or at certain times of day? And also favorite techniques that you like to come back to when you’re developing new stories, if you don’t get a gift from your subconscious.
AL: I’m very chaotic. What has changed over time is that I understood that totally works for me. Before, I used to feel bad about it. You’re not writing and you feel bad. The only thing that changed is that I don’t feel bad anymore. I embrace the chaos.
The beginning of my stories are similar to the beginning of this one, in that I’m feeling stuff and collecting things. I sit down, and I don’t know what it’s going to be, and I get started.
The difference between this and the more common experience is that the throughline of this story came early. I just followed it and it made sense already. With other ones, I would have bits and other bits. I would have to think, if I step back after I wrote a bunch of stuff: is the structure working, do I need something more in the middle? That happens more than with this story.
Overall, it’s similar in that the first time I generate things, it’s usually very much a surprise. Once I have a good amount of material, then I see what’s there. I can do more of this high-level thinking and I can see, this is actually missing something here. I need to have a bit down, before I do something like that.
I was interviewing Hernan Diaz and he gave me a hard time about this: I’m a computer person. I write on the computer because I’m always moving things around. If I type something, I love making a copy of it and then changing it. I feel very relaxed, making changes on the computer: I have this, let me save it and do another draft. I feel very comfortable changing things, the computer makes it easy.
I’m very not precious. I can write where it’s noisy and with distractions, it doesn’t bother me. My life pushed me to be that way.
PS: Why was Hernan Diaz giving you a hard time about that?
AL: He’s like, no, you gotta write it by hand in a notebook, there’s something that happens. I’m like, I’m sorry!
PS: Is there anything I haven’t asked you yet, that you want to speak to about this particular story? Or anything that came up when we were talking?
AL: This story was the one, out of the whole book, that I was most upset before I started. I did feel so good having written it, because of that horror and joy at the same time that happened here. That was really good.
PS: What are you working on next?
AL: I’m working on two things. I’m always working on a couple things, so I don’t feel the pressure and I can procrastinate with one.
I’m working on a poetry collection that is focused on vision, and the parallax effect, and all sorts of pop physics things.
I’m also working on a novel. I’m in the fun stage of the novel, which is a midwest novel that has two threads. One is in the area between Iowa City and Chicago, and has an amnesic ghost there. The other one is Chicago architecture, and there will be some portal stuff that unites these two threads. It’s in a fun stage where all this stuff is really exciting, and I don’t yet have many problems. But the problems will come.
Ananda Lima is the 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 American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers and Program Curator at StoryStudio, Chicago. Lima was a mentor at the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program, and the inaugural Latinx-in-Publishing WIP Fellow, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers. She has an MA in Linguistics (UCLA) and an MFA in Creative Writing (Rutgers-Newark). Craft, her fiction debut, was longlisted for the Story Prize, the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. The New York Times describes it as “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago and New York.
Preety Sidhu is Electric Literature’s associate editor for Recommended Reading and The Commuter. For two years, she led a national writing conference that hosted over 600 manuscript consultations with literary agents and editors annually. She holds an MFA in fiction from Louisiana State University, where she served on the editorial team at The Southern Review. Previously, she was a math teacher at independent schools in the New York and Boston areas.
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