Reading With Pride: a conversation with Kristen Arnett

Join us this Pride month at Fern & Fable Books in Ormond Beach, FL, for a reading and conversation with author Kristen Arnett, to celebrate the launch of her new book, Stop Me if You’ve Heard This Before. She will be joined in conversation by William Johnson, Director of PEN America Florida.

Following this reading and conversation, there will be a Q&A with questions from the audience and a book signing. Snacks will be provided.

About the book:

Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she’s a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she’s always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.

Things start looking up when Cherry meets Margot the Magnificent—a much older lesbian magician—who seems to have worked out the lines between art, business, and life, and has a slick, successful career to prove it. With Margot’s mentorship and industry connections, Cherry is sure to take her art to the next level. Plus, Margot is sexy as hell. It’s not long before Cherry must decide how much she’s willing to risk for Margot and for her own explosive new act—and what kind of clown she wants to be under her suit.

Kristen Arnett is the queer Floridian author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Studios of Key West, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She runs the substack “Dad Lessons.” Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her third novel, STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE, was published in March 2025 by Riverhead Books, and they will also publish her as-yet untitled collection of short fiction. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.

William Johnson is the Director of PEN America’s Florida office. A longtime steward in the writing community, Johnson was the editor and publisher of Mary Literary, a literary magazine committed to showcasing work of artistic integrity. He also co-produced Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, the first major anthology for queer poets of color in the United States. In 2011, Johnson began his tenure at Lambda Literary, an organization dedicated to promoting LGBTQ literature. As the deputy director of Lambda Literary, Johnson oversaw many of the organization’s most dynamic programs and public events, including the Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices and Lambda’s web magazine, the Lambda Literary Review.

In 2021, Johnson was awarded The Publishing Triangle’s Leadership Award, an award recognizing contributions to LGBTQ literature by those who are not primarily writers, such as editors, agents, librarians, and institutions.