Years before she wrote her own debut novel, The Dividing Sky (Joy Revolution, Penguin Random House), Jill Tew’s first-ever favorite book was Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
“People around [Anne], as much as they loved her, often encouraged her to get her head out of the clouds, but she was able to hold onto that and infuse her own world with a little bit of magic,” the Atlanta-based author explains. “I was a little girl at the time and felt similarly. I saw magic and fairy tales in everyday life, and it was nice to see a character live that on the page unapologetically, and I think in doing so, bring magic to the people around her.”
photograph courtesy of the author
Jill Tew
Tew grew up to put her own little bit of magic to work inspiring others. Her path has not been a straightforward one. She loved writing short stories in school, and always loved words and wordplay, she says, writing poems and parodies of popular songs to amuse her friends. When the time came, though, Tew set her stories aside and made the practical choice: She decided to study business.
Later, Tew worked at a tech start-up when her coworkers invited her to see a movie – Divergent — after work one evening. Tew was surprised by how much she enjoyed the escape into a fictional world.
“Walking out of that theater, I remembered how much I loved storytelling,” Tew says. “I realized I didn’t want to lose this spark now that I had found it again.”
So Tew cultivated her ember of creativity. She wrote in her free time and eventually finished a manuscript, and now, many steps later, The Dividing Sky is on bookshelves, out in the wild, able to inspire its own acts of creativity.
“It’s funny that I’m now debuting with my own YA dystopian world after seeing Divergent,” Tew reflects. “For me, it means a lot to contribute to that canon with a book starring two Black leads. I feel like it’s all too easy for people to see stories with Black people in the lead and relegate them to a corner of the conversation or to a certain niche, and it was really important to me to have themes in the book that apply to all people, a message for all of us to try to internalize, the same way that Triss or Katniss or any of those characters do.
“We have universal things to say about the human experience.”
Tew has something timely and powerful to say about the human experience, and it’s something inspired by her own struggle to balance time. Before she was a full-time writer, she held a series of day jobs that she describes as time-consuming and stressful. “To save time, I would outsource parts of my life,” she remembers, listing dog-walkers, meal prep services, and the like. “I found myself never using that saved time for something that was fulfilling for me; I was just using it for more work.”
At the heart of The Dividing Sky is the “strong conviction that life and nature and the natural elements around us are intrinsically valuable and worth protecting and nurturing,” the author explains.
Years later, Tew found herself remembering that time she had outsourced, and she felt inspiration strike. “What if you had a neurochip in your brain that would allow someone else to go on dates for you?” she wondered. “That way, you and your wife can go on a date, and you can stay home and keep working and remain productive.”
With that simple idea, Tew had hit on a science-fiction premise perfectly balanced on a knife edge between absolute absurdity and utter mind-numbing terror.
Still, for all the solemn cynicism in the world Tew has imagined, her story is, seemingly paradoxically, one of inspiration and comfort. At the heart of The Dividing Sky is the “strong conviction that life and nature and the natural elements around us are intrinsically valuable and worth protecting and nurturing,” the author explains. Her story’s heroes believe that people are valuable because human life is intrinsically valuable, not simply because they are productive.
In the world of the book, Liv works as what the author calls an “emo proxy.” Liv watches sunsets, looks at blades of grass blowing in the wind, and catalogs — and sells — her emotional reactions to them. Her clients are primarily the incredibly wealthy, but she occasionally sells happy memories to her fellow lower-income citizens. Which is illegal.
Her crimes put her on the radar of Adrian, a rookie law enforcement agent, who tracks her down. When he finds her, she has wiped all her memories. He’s faced with the question: If Liv can’t even remember the crimes she’s supposedly committed, how can she be brought to justice for them?
“At the beginning of the book, Liv and pretty much everybody that she knows live in the slums of the city and they’re trying to make it out, and I don’t want to discredit that idea — seeking material wealth for the sake of surviving,” Tew says. “I mean, you have to eat.”
The distinction is, as the author puts it, “Are we creating time for the simple pleasures of life, or are we edging out the simple pleasures in favor of meaningless productivity?”
It’s a question everyone must answer for themselves, but if Tew’s stories, both real-life and fictional, are any inspiration, it’s worth it to set aside a little time to nurse the creative spark.
