Mekare Bowen
One of Mekare Bowen’s photographs.
Another of Mekare Bowen’s photos, this one featuring her sister, Aria.
If you’re expecting this to be an impartial, both-sides-of-the-story kind of article, just keep on moving. This is not the article you seek.
But, if you’re here to listen to me gush about why Mekare Bowen may possibly be the most talented person I know, then pull up a chair. I’ve got a tale to tell.
It’s a tale of a Coupeville High School junior with more talent in her pinkie than most of us have in our whole bodies.
It’s the story of a young woman who can out-write, out-photograph, out-whatever-the-heck-you-want-to-pick.
I have known Mekare since she was born — used to work with her mom Dea at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso, where we spent Wednesday nights with Hannah Anderson trying to out-gross each other (“Hannah … that’s … not … CREAM CORN!!”) — seen her be an ideal big sister to Aria, watched her grow and progressively head towards eventual world domination.
All with a genuine smile and a remarkable sereneness.
She wrote a 550-page fantasy book, “Flying Fast: Untouchable,” by the time she was 14.
Then lost it, victim of a faulty computer hard drive.
Then turned right around and started anew, firm in the belief this time she’ll get every last word right.
“For now, I’ve had to start from scratch, minus the first forty-some-odd pages that I had kept on my other computer to work on from there,” Bowen said. “I was pretty devastated to lose it all, but I looked at it more as a chance to start over and do better.
“I wasn’t happy with the direction it was headed in while editing the entire book,” she added. “But I couldn’t do a lot to change it because while looking over page after page, my ideas would start to bleed together and I’d maybe add a part here that I forgot to add there, or I’d change a character’s back story but forgot to follow through with it in later pages, and just things like that.
But don’t worry, Stephanie Meyer and your best-selling ilk. She’s still coming for you.
“I am determined to be the youngest successful author out there, so you can expect plenty of writing from me,” Bowen said. “It just won’t be happening over night!”
New writing ideas are constantly firing off in her head. The only difficulty is pulling them all together.
“I have a new idea every day. I’ve had a lot lately, but I typically forget them and then they come back to me randomly,” Bowen said. “I love those moments actually, because it’s like somebody punched you in the face with flowers wrapped around their knuckles; it’s a bittersweet moment because half of you is ecstatic to have the idea back, the other half is mad that you forgot it in the first place and the idea typically hits you again at the most inconvenient time.
“Actually, if someone were to punch me, I’d probably punch them back — without the flowers,” she added. “But I think you get the picture.”
If she doesn’t punch you, she can always kick you now, since, in a move that caught some by surprise, Bowen decided to branch out and become a cheerleader this year.
“Becoming a cheerleader was as big of a shock to me as it was to everyone else. I don’t think ANYBODY expected THAT one,” Bowen said. “It’s funny because I used to be such a critic, I didn’t have a lot of respect for it until I actually tried it.
“No one realizes how much strength and energy is actually put into cheer,” she added. “Our first practice I realized just difficult it really is and I was so intrigued; it was so much more than I had expected.
“Cheerleading isn’t for wimps, man. Believe me.”
Becoming a cheerleader is one of many changes Bowen has experienced since making the jump to high school.
Previously a student at the Cedar School, her arrival at CHS as a freshman was full of trepidation that soon turned to joy.
“High school has gone amazing. Freshman year I didn’t know very many people, but going into my third year has been incredible,” Bowen said. “I am so lucky to know the people that I know now. There are some dang good people at CHS who I am glad to have in my life now.
“Coming from the Cedar School, I was terrified. It was scary going from a school of maybe sixty kids to a school of three-hundred and fifty,” she added. “But after some time the school and everyone in it came to grow on me.
“I just had to make my place in the school, which did take some time, but I think I’m doing alright so far! I mean, I was recently voted as a homecoming nominee — I must be doing SOMETHING right!”
While she has thought some about her future (“Definitely planning on taking over the world. But that’ll probably happen after college”), she remains sure of one thing.
She will always return to her love of writing, and, one day, she will let the whole world in on what Coupeville already knows — the Bowens are a one-of-a-kind family.
“One book I do plan on writing one day, no matter what, will be about my family and all of our crazy adventures,” she said. “That is inevitable. It WILL be done and I greatly look forward to starting it.”
The rest of just look forward to reading it.
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We send you live to the streets of Coupeville, where intrepid photographer Shelli Trumbull is on the scene, clicking away and capturing the sights and sounds of Coupeville High School’s 2nd Annual Homecoming Parade.
