The Greatest Showman meets This Is Us by way of Sarah Dessen in this heart-wrenching, hopeful contemporary novel about a multiracial teen who risks it all to follow her dreams by joining the circus, from the critically acclaimed author of Starfish.
We had the pleasure of chatting to Akemi Dawn Bowman about her new YA contemporary, Harley In The Sky! In the interview, Akemi chats about its main character, music, mental health, books, and more!
Hi Akemi, can you tell us a bit about yourself and about Harley in the Sky?
I’m originally from Las Vegas, but I’ve been living in Scotland for nearly a decade. Most of the inspiration for my writing comes from the magic I find in my day-to-day life. Whether it’s a great story, a really cool looking tree, or an entire circus performance, I love feeling like I’ve been plucked out of the real world and thrown into a fantastical one.
The idea for HARLEY IN THE SKY came from wanting to combine my love of magic with the honesty of real life. It’s a story about a teen who dreams of being a trapeze artist, and when her parents insist that she goes to university instead, Harley decides to run away and join a rival circus. It’s about family, growing up, and finding a balance between chasing your dreams and nurturing the relationships that mean the most to you.
Harley has led quite an interesting life, growing up in the circus. What is the earliest memory that she can remember?
I like to think one of Harley’s earliest memories would be of the costumes, and how big the stage felt. As a kid, those were always the things that stayed in my head—the textures, and vibrancy, and how huge the world seemed. And growing up in a circus, Harley would’ve been watching the magic happen in real-time, both backstage and during rehearsals. So I’m sure she remembers having a cast member do her makeup and hair before running around the stage like she was part of the performance.
When you first started writing Harley, what about her personality drew you to her?
Harley can be a little unpredictable. She doesn’t always follow a linear path, and is usually completely motivated by however she’s feeling at the time. Her emotions tend to be in the extremes: she’s bursting with joy, or overwhelmed with sadness, or fuming with anger. She doesn’t really experience things in small portions, but in a lot of ways this is just Harley being her honest self. And I really like that about her—how she isn’t afraid to feel things.
I have to know, when you were writing Harley in the Sky, what drew you to the trapeze as opposed to the high wire or a different act of the show?
For me, the trapeze was always the coolest part of the circus. There’s a dance-like quality to it, and there’s something special about seeing a performance high up in the air, like I’m watching a bird or a faerie or a shooting star. It just makes my heart feel lighter. And I wanted to recreate that love of the trapeze in Harley. Also, Robin was one of my favorite superheroes as a kid. He came from a family of trapeze artists, which has probably been lingering around in my subconscious all these years!
The book has such a lovely connection with music. Actually, all of your books do. Do you have a particular soundtrack in mind when you’re writing your stories, or does that come later?
Any kind of soundtrack usually comes later, because I’m someone who can’t write with background noise of any kind. It’s not as bad when I’m editing, but when I’m drafting, I need complete silence. That being said, I do usually have a song or two that stands out for every story—something that tends to inspire a specific scene, and kind of captures the tone of the book. And I do sometimes write with those songs in mind. For STARFISH, that was “Jesus, Etc.” by Wilco. For SUMMER BIRD BLUE, it was “The Call” by Regina Spektor. And for HARLEY IN THE SKY, it was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by The Beatles.
I wanted to know so much more about the mysterious Vas! Can you tell me what kind of music he might listen to when he’s not playing his violin?
Vas dreams of being a composer, so he’s a fan of film and television soundtracks. His playlists definitely have a lot of James Horner, Joe Hisaishi, Alexandre Desplat, and Yann Tiersen. And I can imagine him being a Bon Iver fan as well—something atmospheric and haunting that he could chill out to!
Mental health is such an important part of this story, particularly regarding Harley. Does any of this draw from real life experience?
Yes, definitely. I’ve struggled with my mental health from a pretty young age, and because of personal circumstances, I didn’t see a therapist until I was in my twenties. Harley fluctuates between being impulsive and chasing this unrealistic version of “happiness,” and dealing quite heavily with depression. And just like me when I was a teen, she doesn’t have a formal diagnosis.
Prior to seeing a therapist, I’d spent years dealing/coping with my mental illness without a label. And I think we exist at a time where a lot of people like labels and boxes, which can be super important and helpful to many, but it’s also unfortunately used sometimes as a way to gatekeep. And I personally find that quite frustrating, because I don’t think we should be excluding people from discussing their experiences with mental health simply because they don’t have the privilege of a formal diagnosis.
Many people don’t have access to affordable health care, or they’re in personal situations that make it impossible for them to seek therapy as an option. If we’re going to get rid of stigmas, we have to let people have open, honest conversations, even when they’re messy, and even when they vary wildly from someone else’s experience. And I believe labels exist mainly to help individuals understand themselves, and for mental health professionals to assist with a treatment plan. They aren’t a stamp of approval where you suddenly go from “not mentally ill” to “mentally ill.” Everything a person is feeling prior to being diagnosed is still valid, which means everything a person is feeling when they haven’t been diagnosed is equally valid, too.
The Maison du Mystère travels to a lot of interesting places in the book. How did you come to choose those particular cities and states?
Harley starts off in Las Vegas because that’s where I’m from, and it seemed like the perfect place for a big, extravagant circus show like the one her parents run. From there, it was mostly a matter of figuring out the distance between locations. It had to be somewhere that could draw a crowd, but couldn’t be so far away from the previous location that it wouldn’t seem realistic from a travel perspective. I used Google Maps a lot to plan out the journey!
After Harley, you have an upcoming sci-fi duology in the works, can you tell us a little about that?
The first book is called THE INFINITY COURTS, and it’s about a teen who dies and wakes up in the afterlife, only to discover it’s been taken over by an artificial intelligence posing as a queen. It’s basically the sci-fi/fantasy mash-up of my heart, and all the things I love thrown into one book. I’m very excited about it, and have just seen a little preview of the cover. I can confidently say that it is BEAUTIFUL.
I saw that Jane Austen is Harley’s literary hero, but what else might we find on her bookshelf?
Harley loves Jane Austen because she’s a romantic at heart, but she is also very much into fantasy, so I think she’d be looking for books that combine both. AN ENCHANTMENT OF RAVENS by Margaret Rogerson would definitely be a favorite, along with UPROOTED by Naomi Novik and THE CRUEL PRINCE by Holly Black. And Harley is a nerd at heart, too, so her shelves have tons of graphic novels—mostly about superheroes!
Akemi Dawn Bowman is the author of William C. Morris Award Finalist Starfish, Summer Bird Blue, and Harley in the Sky. Her upcoming sci-fi series, The Infinity Courts, is set to release in 2021, followed by her middle-grade debut, Generation Misfits. A proud Ravenclaw and Star Wars enthusiast, she has a BA in social sciences from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She currently lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. You can find Akemi on Instagram and Twitter, along with at her website.
