Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One – An Evening with Kristen Arnett

This is no April Fools’ Day prank, but we will definitely be discussing some clowns! Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling Florida author Kristen Arnett back to the bookstore to celebrate the release of her latest novel, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One!

Arnett will be joined in converation by the author of Helen House and managing editor of Autostraddle and TriQuarterly, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya!

More about Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

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.

Equal parts bravado, tenderness, and humor, and bursting with misfits, magicians, musicians, and mimes, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One is a masterpiece of comedic fiction that asks big questions about art and performance, friendship and community, and the importance of timing in jokes and in life.

Kristen Arnett is the queer 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. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, and elsewhere. Her next novel, STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE, about a lesbian birthday party clown, will be published by Riverhead Books. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the author of Helen House (Burrow Press 2022), a queer horror novelette. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle and the managing editor of TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and others. She was a 2021 nonfiction fellow and a 2023 speculative fiction writer in residence at Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. She is currently a Tin House Fellow.