The First Bright Thing: J.R. Dawson Lights a Sapphic Spark In the Darkness

There’s something about the circus. Whether you view the big top as a place of magical escapism or a thrill-seeker’s paradise full of death-defying stunts, it’s a setting where almost anything seems possible. This is probably why it’s such a popular location for so many successful fantasy stories, with books like The Night Circus, Caraval, Hotel Magnifique, and The Carnivale of Curiosities exploring the unique joys, dangers, and personalities of this world.

J.R. Dawson’s The First Bright Thing follows the story of a magical circus in an alternate version of 1920s America where people known as Sparks have appeared in the wake of World War I. Gifted with unique and very specific special abilities, Sparks can do everything from teleport to see the future, with all sorts of powers in between, from the fascinating to the mundane. 

Shunned and feared by a large portion of mainstream society, the Ringmaster known as Rin has made her big top a haven for Sparks, who use their powers to delight visitors and help the circus function. Rin and her troupe travel the Midwest, teleporting from city to city and sometimes decade to decade—the Ringmaster’s Spark allows her to time travel—all doing their best to protect each other from a world that sees them as a threat and to find those audience members that need a reason to dream in their lives. 

Unfortunately, they must also constantly be on guard for the evil Circus King, a dark figure whose abusive past with Rin has left scars she’s never quite been able to erase and who runs a  circus of his own—one essentially built on nightmares that encourages its visitors to both hate themselves and fear others. 

However, despite its occasionally frightening elements—set in the gap between the two world wars, Dawson’s novel has plenty of hints about the darkness that awaits the world in the coming years and the threats marginalized people like Sparks will face at the hands of Nazis and those like them—The First Bright Things is ultimately a story of hope and redemption. One whose central thesis is that no matter how dark the world gets, there is still reason to have faith—in ourselves, in love, in each other, and in our collective capacity for goodness and change. It’s a beautiful story and one that will stick with its readers long after its final page. 

We got the chance to sit down with Dawson for a meandering (and very fun) chat about her debut novel, where the inspiration for The First Bright Thing came from, whether clowns are scary, the endless possibility of liminal spaces, and a whole lot more.

Paste: I’ll start with the easy one: Tell me about The First Bright Thing. Where did the inspiration for it come from? Set the stage for us.

J.R. Dawson: So I think that First Bright Thing is one of those books that just culminates from a bunch of different little things that happen through your life. I remember, when I was a kid, having a dream about a girl who could make paintings on walls come to life and, for some reason, her dad was trying to suppress that and hide that from people. Then we went to a circus—not in the dream, but in real life—and it was at this amusement park in Iowa, and they put the big top between two of the roller coasters, and it was just like this old school circus with a dusty floor and a trapeze swinger in sequins and stuff like that. And I just thought, “Wow this is so cool—I’m going to write about this someday.” 

Those were the two [big] spots it came from, but it was also just thinking about all the legislation that’s happened against queer people in the last few years, and me growing up a little bit, and finding my own found family, and breaking away from the last chapter of my life. It’s a lot of stuff!

Paste: I’ve never actually been to the circus, but I love the idea of the circus, if that makes sense. I love stories about the circus. Heck, I think that season of American Horror Story that was set at a circus is one of the best ones! What do you think it is about this setting, or just the idea of the circus generally that people find so fascinating?

Dawson: Historically, the answer is that a circus was kind of like a mini World’s Fair where, when it would come through town, it started off as a zoo where it was the one time that, if you lived in the middle of Nebraska or Iowa, you were going to see a zebra. And then that furled out through the years into some exploitative stuff. And I think that it is a mixture of that origin of, “Oh, there are new people coming into town, and they have these things that I’ve never seen. And it’s this moment to see magic and, also, there are new people coming into town and they’re weird performers, and they’re nomadic, and this is not one of us,” kind of thing. So it’s a kind of an other-ing as well. 

It’s the [lure of the] unknown: It’s this performance where all of these amazing things happen. But also, there’s this really dark side to circuses where it can be a little dangerous too. And there was a lot of animal cruelty, a lot of human rights issues, lots of exploitation. It’s a little scary.

Paste: It has clowns!

Dawson: I like clowns! I think clowns are really hard. It’s hard to be a clown.

Paste: I feel like the circus is a really weird liminal space where you can find… In your book, it’s literally magic, but it could be metaphorical magic, too, because this is that in-between space where literally anything could happen.

Dawson: Yes. I think that’s a great way of putting it, is a liminal space.

Paste: And a lot of liminal space is frightening because it’s like—that’s the only space where you can engage with a lot of this stuff. And I feel like that’s what the circus is, too, in a lot of ways because it’s like, “Look at these people doing things that shouldn’t be possible.” And either that’s good or bad. Or, in the case of your book, both, depending on which circus you are attending.

Dawson: Hopefully the nice one! 

Paste: I love that this book has so many different interesting pieces all at once. I love the queer story at the center of this book. I love the time travel aspect of it. But let’s start with Rin, because she’s an incredible character. I love how still strong she is, despite being such an obvious victim of real trauma, and how she is still willing to fight for herself and the people she loves. Tell me about Rin and her journey and how you see her arc?

Dawson: I think that Rin is a super-important character for me because she’s a very personal character. And, how do I say this? So I think that when I was writing Rin, I wanted to see who I could be in the future, because when I started writing this book I had just fallen into my thirties from twenties, which is like you’re still young, but you’re like, “Oh, I’m going in the other direction now. Okay.”

And I was reading books where a lot of the you’re-going-to-be-okay characters were 21-22, and I was like, “Well, I’m going into a new phase of life and I want to see that in the future I’m going to be okay.” And so I made her older than me, and I made her a total badass. And I was like, “Yeah, go after it. You got this, girl.” And I really liked that she was in this mentor space that I had seen a lot of male characters or masculine characters take.

The other thing is that, coming from a theater background, we don’t get to play those kinds of parts all that often. In 2017, I was in an all-femme production of 1776, and I got to play Ben Franklin, and it was the first time that I had any power on stage that wasn’t like being a wicked witch, or an evil mother-in-law, or some nonsense. And that was the first time that I could enter a room and be like, “I’m playing somebody who is competent and somebody is looking up to.” And I was like, “Why don’t we have more girl parts like this? This is ridiculous.”

Rin gets these really amazing scenes, and so does Odette, and Mauve, I mean, she takes down a giant clown, and when they’re marching across the midway to try to find Ed after he’s attacked the circus and they’ve got this shotgun, and they’re all-in, like, “We’re going to do this together.”  And she’s competent, so I love that there’s now a character out there, or at least another character out there that, from a theatrical perspective, could be given to somebody who doesn’t really get to do that very much.

Paste: I do love that she’s an older woman, not just because I am myself now on the cusp of oldness, but also just because I feel like in a lot of speculative fiction or fantasy, it is always younger girls. It’s always girls who are ascending into their power or whatever. Middle-aged women still kick ass! 

Dawson: Especially middle-aged women! Because I think that those of us who have maybe gone through some things as a kid, you are still ascending in your thirties and forties, and fifties. It isn’t like we all figured it out in our twenties, and a lot of us come out later in life.

Paste: The premise of Rin’s circus is it’s a circus full of people called “Sparks”, and everybody has their own specific special ability. How did you come up with what everyone could do? I always love writers who build these really intricate worlds that feel like they have existed before I came into the story and will continue well after I exit it. And I feel like you really had to think about: What does this world look like? What do these powers look like? Where did these powers come from? And just well beyond what’s in the pages of the novel. Talk to me about the book’s larger world and how you created it.

Dawson: I started off with, okay, if this was a magic circus that had people with one ability, what would the abilities be? The first one I came up with was Josephine’s [who can make spectacular illusions] because that’s where the image [for the book] had come from. But then, circus specific, the next one was actually Tina’s [a shapeshifter who becomes all the animals in the show. This was around the time that Barnum and Bailey was closing down because of animal rights and Tina’s ability would allow there to consenting animals and then I just pulled it from there. 

For the three women, I was thinking, okay, what does a ringmaster need? And also, if these three women are going to go through time and space, what do they need to be armed with in order to not die? And so they need to have a navigator, they need to have a medic. They need to have somebody who’s driving the boat. But also, somebody who is a navigator, why? Why? When the spark hit, why was that something that was amplified in her? And what sort of person would be a healer? And what sort of person would shapeshift? And why?

Often when we talk about superpowers and superheroes, there’s this discussion of, does the superpower make the superhero? Does the superhero make the superpower? And I really like the way that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier talked about it, where it’s like, well, it just amplifies who you actually are. And so you look at Captain America, he was a really great guy. He could have been a really terrible man.  And we’ve seen that now in two portrayals of what Captain America could have been. But with the boys, and then that fun guy in Winter Soldier that’s not the Falcon.

Paste: Oh, yeah, the Great Value version of Captain America. 

Dawson: Yes! And the other thing is that, as a reader, you’re not going to fall into ooze, or your a Spark isn’t going to literally come out of the ground and change things, but I do really believe, and this part of the Jewish belief in sparks, that all of us do have something of a light inside of us, a talent, or of something that we’re really good at that’s going to make the world a better place. I know people who can’t literally heal people, but sitting with them and talking with them, it always makes people feel better, or somebody has really great intuition, or somebody’s really good with cars, or whatever it is. 

We all have something to offer the community and other people. So it was really important to me that it wasn’t just randomly doled out, but that these were powers that were the people and were very specific to their real spark, who they really were.

Paste: Does Maynard get paid more? This is very important to me. [Maynard’s Spark allows him to multiply himself many times over, so he does all the work of physically disassembling and reassembling the circus, along with other jobs.]

Dawson: Yes. He gets a paycheck for every time that he multiplies, so all of the Maynards get paid. 

Paste: I love what you were just saying about Jewish tradition. And stories that… I think it’s not really cool right now in our pop culture to really believe in something. And you can define “believe in” however you need to, whether it’s God, or whether it’s each other or whatever, but I think in terms of our media that’s still really rare. And Rin’s uncovering of her own cultural and faith heritage, and how that shapes who she is is lovely.

Dawson: In ​​Judaism, there are actual stories of a thing called a spark that’s like the divine being, or whoever is up there, trying to bring something holy and good down to our level but it is so far away that it shattered, kind of like the Snow Queen, but like reverse Snow Queen. But it shattered, and all of these pieces of the divine got stuck in stuff here in the earth and in people and in animals and objects. 

And so one of the things as a Jew is you’re supposed to go around everywhere and release these sparks. You’re supposed to bring out the good in not just people but animals and objects and nature and just be a good influence using your own light to help ignite other lights and make the world a little better.

Paste: I have a friend who refers to this kind of storytelling as “hopepunk,” and I feel like The First Bright Thing really epitomizes that in a lot of ways. It’s set between two World Wars. We literally see an atomic bomb go off. Characters are shunned. They’re persecuted. They are literally on the run for their lives. But I still feel like this is such an aspirational and optimistic book. Was that something you really felt intentional about when you put this story together? 

Dawson: Yeah. I think that, for me, it was super-therapeutic to look at a time in American history that just felt like everything was happening, or it was right before everything was going to happen, and I needed that hope, and I really needed that hope to stay alive.

There have been so many times as a millennial where you look around and you’re like, “This is clearly going in a bad direction.” And there are some things that are happening in our world that, even if we all got together and did great things today, they’re still going to suck in 20 years. The ball is already rolling. And so, how do we live a fulfilling life and a happy life, a joyful life, when you know that the atom bomb is 20 years out?

The scene between Odette and Rin where they’re sitting there talking about what are the things that are worth moving forward for, that came from the night that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and my spouse and I were like, “What are we going to do?” And so we just started naming off all of the good things in the world that were worth continuing to try for, so yes.

Paste: Let’s talk about Edward, who is, I think, A, horrible; but also B., sympathetic, but I mean that in a very specific way. Not in the sort of, I think the internet calls it “woobification”, I think? The way some handsome villains are seen as vaguely sympathetic or at least misunderstood. I was glad he stayed monstrous throughout—tragically monstrous, but not in the way that implies he needs redemption.

Dawson: Ed was actually, probably, the first character other than Josephine that popped up. And I think there was just this one night in the spring of 2018 where I just sat down and wrote 95% of Ed’s stuff in 40 minutes. It was the first stuff that came out, and it was the stuff that I had to work the least on in revisions. I think that Ed had just been building up for a while.

I like to think that this book has the loveliest, most wonderful people that I’ve ever met in it, and also just the worst people that I’ve ever met. And so I think that knowing my own multiple Edwards, it was something that I needed to write about and it was something that I needed to get out. Sometimes you just have to purge something and feel not so alone in it, because I know that there are a lot of people out there who know Edwards, who have had them disrupt [their lives] in some way, who had to potentially survive an Edward. And the idea was that his spark would be a sort of gaslighting on steroids.  

But also, I didn’t want to make him a straw man because it’s too easy if all you do is hate him, or you’re like, “Oh, well he’s just a sociopath,” or whatever. I didn’t want it to be that he was that guy from Netflix’s You, he was just this weird serial killer that had some sort of a condition or something. What’s really sad about the Edwards in the world and why it’s so hard to leave them is because you love them. They’re human beings. And a lot of the time it is somebody who is very wounded who is lashing out and creating more wounds for somebody else. And so it was really important that he was human, that I was giving him chances to evacuate his plan, because at the end when he’s like, “I didn’t have a choice,” I wanted to make sure that he had a choice. 

Paste: I love a found family trope so much. That just gives me such joy because I think there really is often a big difference between the family you’re born into and the family you choose. Talk to me about the little found family at the center of this story. What is it about this trope that speaks to something to us as readers?

Dawson: I think that found family are people that have chosen you and don’t really come with strings or a contract. It’s just very much like, “Hey, I just love you for who you are. We fit, let’s hang out.” And so I’ve always loved the little band of people. I grew up with Labyrinth, and I just wanted to hang out with Ludo so much.

I feel like the circus is all of the loveliest people that I’ve met. Growing up in the theater and living in Nebraska, as a queer person, you find your art community and you get to meet some amazing people. And there are some people who have passed on who I was able to put in and imbue different characters with their memory. One of my good friends passed away when we were about 26 years old. And they got cancer very quickly and were gone within six months. And they were a huge light. If anybody has been a spark in this world, it was them. They just saw the good in everyone. They were always there for everybody and it was so genuine. They were very giving of themselves because they believed that we could all be better, and they just got snuffed out so early. So they’re definitely there. 

Bernard is definitely somebody that I knew. And my spouse is the greatest person ever, and I really wanted to memorialize that. When my copies came, my author copies, I wrote the “Shall I compare thee to A summer’s day” [sonnet] in gel pen in the front because, no matter what happens to us in the future, this is going to be a testament of while we were here. This is how somebody loved me and how I was. So I was so lucky to have been loved. 

Paste: This is your first book, yeah? How’s that, the whole debut process?

Dawson: It’s been an emotional ride. It’s so nerve-wracking and so scary, but also so exciting. And it feels real because, for so many years, you study and you read and you write manuscript after manuscript, and you’re like, “I don’t know if this thing is going to go out in the world. Nobody’s going to read it.” And then, all of a sudden, it’s on Goodreads, and people that you’ve never met are reading it, and it means something to them. And you’re like, Oh, my God. Did we do it? Is there a book?” And then it came and I’m holding it and it says Tor on the spine. And I’m just like, “This is real. Oh, my God, there’s TikToks about it. That’s really cool.”

Paste: Even though I work in books, the arc of how long publishing takes still surprises me. So maybe this isn’t as early a question as I feel like it is. So your first book is coming out. What is next for you as an author? Do you have plans? Ideas? Would you write more in this universe? I would read more in this universe.

Dawson: I got contracted for two books, but they’re both standalones. So First Bright Thing was written as a standalone. I do have a little author outline for a sequel, but I don’t know if that’s ever going to go anywhere other than just me enjoying writing an outline for a sequel. But the second book [I’m writing] actually takes place, the whole thing is in a liminal space.

It takes place in Chicago in 2003, and it is Charon’s daughter, the ferryman’s daughter is taking over ferrying the dead, and the river Styx is Lake Michigan. And on her first night ferrying this boat, one of the people on the boat ends up still being alive. And she’s very pretty, and so it’s a sapphic love story that takes place in this way station between living and the dead.

The First Bright Thing is available now wherever books are sold. 

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Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.