New York Times bestselling author Kristen Arnett knows this contradiction too well.
Arnett’s latest novel, “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One,” follows Cherry Hendricks, a struggling clown and aquarium store employee relentlessly pursuing art (and hot closeted Central Florida married women). Cherry drags her makeup out of a garbage can to make it to a gig, tunnel-visioned on her dream even as life, capitalism, and the absurdity of Orlando try to shake her off course. That is until, of course, she meets the one named Margot the Magnificent. Cue George Michael’s “Father Figure.”
It’s a novel about ambition, queerness, and the weird, messy reality of creating something when the world keeps telling you not to bother.
The book is out on March 18 on Riverhead Books, and Arnett will be in conversation with her wife, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, at Tombolo Books on April 1, which is quite appropriate for a book about a clown.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay sat down with Arnett to talk about clowning as a metaphor for art, the precarity of queer spaces, and why gas station snacks might just be the great Floridian equalizer.
Tickets for Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One : An Evening with Kristen Arnett happening Tuesday, April 1 at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg are still available for $5.
Your previous books, ‘Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth,’ always capture the duality of Florida, especially Orlando. It’s a place of both fantasy and brutality. Orlando always gets love in your books, but this one feels like it’s really steeped in the city’s essence. What were you thinking about when going into ‘Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One?’
I consider myself a place writer—very much a Florida writer—and that’s an honor to me. With this book, I specifically set out to write an Orlando book, like a real Orlando book. I put little Easter eggs in there for people who have lived here a long time. But more than that, I wanted to write about what it’s like to exist in a city where people are constantly coming in, and you are being pushed out—out of housing, out of jobs, out of spaces that once felt like home.
I also wanted to explore what it means to be a working artist here. Orlando is full of artists—performers, actors, dancers, drag queens, visual artists. But because it’s a tourism economy, people often dismiss that work as tacky, unserious. I wanted to write about someone who takes their art very seriously, even if the world doesn’t.
I love that, especially because so many creative communities in Orlando exist in this nomadic way. They pop up, thrive for a while, then disappear when rent gets too high.
Right! Queer spaces here don’t always get to be permanent. A place becomes queer because the management is queer, or the staff is queer, and then queer people feel safe there. And then—suddenly—it’s gone. I wanted the book to reflect the instability of the community, even when you want it to last.
Cherry is part of a city where the community is real but not always stable. And that’s not just an Orlando thing—it’s true in so many places in Florida.
The clowning element in this book feels like a metaphor for being a writer—performing, putting yourself out there, never knowing how people will react. Did that connection come up for you?
Oh, absolutely. Clowning is so much like writing—or any creative pursuit, really. You’re trying to connect with an audience, and sometimes they love it, sometimes they don’t get it, and sometimes they straight-up ignore you. But Cherry, my main character, cares so much about her art. She is deeply invested in her craft, even when no one else takes it seriously.
I wanted to explore that dynamic—the tension between taking your own work seriously while existing in a world that constantly belittles it.
You balance humor with some really tough themes—grief, financial instability, the precarity of queer life in Florida. Why was it important to make this book funny?
Because life is funny! Even when it’s bad. Maybe, especially when it’s bad.
Cherry uses humor as a way to process her emotions, but it’s not just deflection—it’s working through things. I structured this book almost like a comedy set, where each chapter has its own rhythm and beats.
And honestly? I wanted to have fun. Writing this book was so much fun.
Okay, serious question—what are Cherry’s go-to gas station snacks? I used to live off Steel Reserve tall boys and white cheddar Cheez-Its.
Oh, she’s living off gas station food. She’s hitting up the hot roller for taquitos. Because she’s spending all her money on other shit, and she’s like, oh fuck, I gotta eat, so, like, that’s what she’s eating.
I used to live off Steel Reserve tall boys and white cheddar Cheez-Its. Now, I’ve moved into a sour gummy phase—Sour Straws, Trolli crawlers, whatever new sour gummy they’ve got, I’ll try it.
Also, I love 7-Eleven. I basically lived at one for years, to the point where they let me do my short fiction book launch inside the store, right by the hot roller. The manager was this super-butch lesbian who kept hiring more butches, so it became a queer space. That’s Florida for you—sometimes your safe space is a 7-Eleven.
By the way! Happy one-year anniversary! With so many people leaving Florida because of its turn towards the far-right, what was it like deciding to have a big, unapologetically queer wedding here?
Thank you! It was important to us to have the wedding here, and we wanted people to experience the real Florida. Most of our guests were traveling in, so we put together a list of our favorite spots—restaurants, bars, places we love—because we wanted them to see what we see in this place.
Florida is complicated. It’s frustrating and wonderful and home. Having a wedding here, at this moment, felt like saying, “Yeah, we’re still here. Queer people live here, and we’re thriving.”
It feels like you had fun writing this book.
I did! It’s the most fun I’ve ever had on a project. I let the idea simmer for a year, and then I sat down and wrote the draft in three and a half months. I was obsessed.
Well, it shows. This book is such a gift. Thank you for writing it, and thank you for this conversation!
Thank you! This was so much fun.
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This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2025.