A. W. Prihandita (she/her) is a Nebula Award-winning author of speculative fiction. She splits her time between the US West Coast, where she earned her PhD in rhetoric and composition, and Indonesia, where she grew up and where her home remains. She attended the Odyssey workshop in 2023 on their Fresh Voices Scholarship, and the Clarion workshop in 2024 on their Octavia Butler Scholarship. Her stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Cast of Wonders, and khōréō magazine, among others. Besides her Nebula Award win, she has also been a finalist for the Ignyte Award and Eugie Award. “The Memory Hounds of Bak-Ankham” is her second appearance in Uncanny, a powerful story of oppression set in a vividly immersive world where memories can be stolen and, with great difficulty, regained.
Uncanny Magazine: This story is dark and visceral, with poignant scenes that explore themes of memory and resistance. What did you need to know before you started drafting? What did you discover as you wrote?
A. W. Prihandita: I have a total of around 12,600 words across several planning documents. A good chunk of that was written before I wrote a single word of the first draft, but some was written either for me to brainstorm the next scene I was preparing to write, or to troubleshoot problems that arose in the drafting process. I feel like the only things I discovered while drafting were problems, and then I had to plan my way out of them!
In the first few planning documents, I had the basic concept and more detailed worldbuilding elements: the factory as the setting, how memory works as some sort of a magic system. There are also sketches of the main characters, their conflicts and relationship, their character arcs and emotional arcs. And of course, I have the themes—I never start writing before I have a clear idea of what I’m trying to say, even if my exact argument changes later. Once I have a pretty good grasp of all of these, I created a plot outline that was organized into acts, each act having its own goal and turning point. Usually I let myself start drafting once I feel like the story has a pretty dynamic movement from act to act, even if I’m not exactly sure of how to make everything that needs to happen, happen. And because the story’s concept was quite tricky and abstract, there were a lot of minute technicalities that I had to figure out as I crafted each scene—things like what’s in the character’s environment that could trigger her memories. Those details I could only figure out as I concretized my vision in actual sentences on the page.
Uncanny Magazine: What was the most challenging part of writing this story? What was the easiest thing?
A. W. Prihandita: The hardest part was, weirdly enough, point-of-view. This has to do with character, too. You see, because the characters in this story couldn’t remember what happened each day, I was worried there wouldn’t be a continuity of character development and interiority. You don’t want to be in the head of someone who’s constantly confused, but also, you want to be in their head enough to empathize with them. I thought of doing first person but decided it would get me too deep in the character’s head, and therefore too confused and forgetful—or, maybe because of all the forgetting, the character just didn’t have the capacity to retell her own story. I never saw this as a second person kind of story, so it had to be third. The problem, then, was psychic distance: I needed to take the position of a distant, omniscient narrator at times, to refer to things the readers would remember, but the character could not. At other times, I needed to be right in the character’s head to simulate her feeling and thinking. And I needed to be able to do these shifts smoothly.
And then of course there was some fighting with myself over whether the story’s concept was silly. That always happens, but it happened more with this story because of its tricky concept. But simultaneously, the concept was the easiest part to get. The thing about the hounds controlling the memories—and that you have to be eaten if you want your memories back—that just came to me.
Uncanny Magazine: Your academic background is in language and rhetoric—how much does your academic work influence your fiction?
A. W. Prihandita: Not at all for this story, fortunately! Well, not the language and rhetoric part, at least. I do decolonial theories, which is maybe why many of my stories, including this one, deal with colonization or oppression. I didn’t get theoretical with this, though. I mostly just wanted to talk about how memories of traumas are double-edged swords: You need them as a catalyst for anger or other emotions that fuel resistance, but they’re also painful, sometimes cripplingly so, and sometimes you might think you’d rather not remember, even if that means not resisting.
Uncanny Magazine: We don’t have to face memory hounds in the real world, but keeping track of everything we need to remember can still be tricky. Do you have a favorite mnemonic aid or memorization trick?
A. W. Prihandita: This isn’t really a trick, but I try my best to put things on my calendar, or just do the thing immediately after I realize it needs to be done. But it really is hard! Sometimes just a few seconds of delay will make me forget to even put the item on my calendar or to-do list.
Uncanny Magazine: Who are some of your literary influences? What is something you’ve read recently and loved?
A. W. Prihandita: I really love Ted Chiang’s work. His stories are always so conceptually clear and tight, so satisfying in their shapes. I love how Fonda Lee crafts her characters; they’re so vivid, with heart-wrenching character development. I read All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker earlier this year, which I didn’t expect to love, but it ended up being one of my favorite reads this year. It has such an epic scope, but somehow at the same time it also feels very intimate. It’s very stylized and quirky at times, but at the same time understated and sleek.
Uncanny Magazine: What are you working on next?
A. W. Prihandita: I’ve been trying to work on a novel for a while now. I’ve started several, but somehow always ended up feeling like something about them wasn’t good enough for me to commit to them. The one I’m actively working on now is only about two months old, but I think this may be the one! It’s a far future science fiction that tries to draw a parallel between individual death and mourning, on the one hand, and nation-building on the other hand. I also have a draft of a dark fantasy short story that’s about interdimensional travel and living in capitalist ruins, plus some sci-fi short fiction ideas I picked up while developing the novel. But to be perfectly honest, I’m not allowing myself to do short fiction until I have a first draft of the novel!
Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
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