Ursina's Shelf - Interview with Author Jill Tew!
Issue 93
Dear readers,
I am jumping up and down with excitement to share with you this wonderful interview with author Jill Tew, whose recently published young adult dystopian novel The Dividing Sky is taking young (and not-so-young) readers’ hearts by storm.
A chat with Jill Tew
Ursina: Jill, your debut novel The Dividing Sky, a young adult novel set in 2364 about a young EmoProxy who illegally deals memories and the forceman tasked to bring her in, dropped earlier this fall: Congratulations!
Jill: Thank you!
U: Let’s go a step back, could you tell us a little about how you evolved from your corporate life to being an author?
J: I loved storytelling as a kid, in all its forms (books, musicals, video games). My favorite book growing up was my rhyming dictionary. I’d make silly poems or parodies of songs. I just really enjoyed the power of words and wordplay. But when it came time for college, I knew I needed to major in something more “practical”. I enrolled at a top undergraduate business school, and put away my love for writing. After graduation, I had a series of very high-demand, stressful jobs. I should have known something was off when I was doing exercises from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in my Manhattan apartment, instead of working on the PowerPoint slides I should have been making. But again, I was trying to carve out a career for myself, so I pushed ahead.
A couple of years later, at a new high-demand, stressful job, some coworkers suggested we go see a movie after work. That movie was “Divergent”, and walking home from the theater, I felt a spark reignite in me. I remembered the love I had for stories growing up, especially science fiction stories (I loved the Animorph series as a kid, and grew up watching an amazing sci-fi show called Farscape with my dad). I suddenly realized that that was how I wanted to make people feel. I didn’t want to spend my life making spreadsheets. I wanted to spend it telling stories. That night I went home and started work on my very first novel.
Seven years later, that book got me my fabulous agent, Jennifer Azantian. The next spring I wrote the book that would become The Dividing Sky, and the rest is history! We sold The Dividing Sky to Joy Revolution, an imprint started by writing power-couple Nicola and David Yoon, dedicated to love stories starring people of color, written by people of color. Working with Joy Revolution has been a true dream come true, and I can’t imagine a better home for the hopeful, swoony dystopian adventure that is The Dividing Sky.
U: Your corporate experiences appear to have inspired some of the characteristics of the Metro, the very detailed world you created in The Dividing Sky. What were some of your inspirations behind creating the Metro?
J: Before becoming a full-time writer, I worked several high-demand jobs. There was always more work to be done, and I found myself outsourcing parts of my life – grocery shopping, pet care, laundry service– in order to make more room. But I always filled whatever time I got back with more work, never with anything truly fulfilling. I found myself wondering about a world where technology advanced so that we could potentially outsource every aspect of our lives. If productivity was the most important thing about us, how would that impact the world? In the Metro, people subsist off of VitaBars that aren’t the tastiest, but are easy to eat on-the-go from one job to another. Their status is dictated by a productivity score that is continuously at risk of dropping, unless they get back to work. Their clothes are simple and uniform, the only variation being different colors depending on what kind of job you do for LifeCorp (the mega corporation that runs everything). It’s not a very cheery picture!
U: But still your protagonist finds the light in this dreary world. Let’s talk about your characters. You set out to write a story with a main cast of color. How was that experience for you and how have the characters resonated with readers?
J: It means the world, truly. Especially growing up in the YA dystopian heyday, I read all of these stories that asked big questions about society, and had things to say that still feel universal, about the human experience. I wanted to write a story with questions just as big, but which happened to feature a Black main character, a Black love interest, and an all-BIPOC cast. We, too, are part of the universal human experience, and we have things to say. It’s been amazing meeting readers who can finally see themselves as heroes in this beloved genre.
U: And I am sure many of your readers are already eagerly awaiting your next story. But first, what’s the best compliment you have received on the book so far?
J: I recently met Veronica Roth at a festival where we were both participating authors, and she told me the premise sounded “really cool… like an anti-capitalist The Giver”. I never would’ve started writing if it hadn’t been for Divergent, so that was an incredible full circle moment!
U: Thank you so so much for the wonderful The Dividing Sky and for talking to me about your book, your inspirations, and about telling us diverse stories. I look forward to what comes next.
More on Jill: Read the Kirkus review of The Dividing Sky here, buy the book here, and follow Jill on Instagram here.
More books written by friends
Currently reading: Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari (buy here).
I hope you enjoyed this interview—a first for this newsletter. If you have any suggestions for topics to cover and books to read, please let me know.
I would like to wish you all a lovely Holiday season with friends and family, both in real life and in stories.
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