Float author JoeAnn Hart is one of our most prolific Ashland Creek Press authors. In addition to her pre-Float novel, Addled, she is the author of a memoir and an award-winning collection of short stories, in addition to myriad essays and reviews. We’re so happy to celebrate her new novel, Arroyo Circle, now out from Green Writers Press.
We were delighted to have a chat with JoeAnn about Arroyo Circle, her writing, and how to take care of our precious planet.
Q: Arroyo Circle is bookended by dramatic, life-changing events: The novel begins in the summer of 2019 with Colorado wildfires and ends in the spring of 2020 with the global Covid pandemic. What’s the significance of this structure?
A: When I started Arroyo Circle in 2017, the pandemic was still a way off, but I had already planned to begin and end the novel with natural disasters exacerbated by human behavior. This structure wasn’t designed to create a sense of futility about the climate crisis, but to highlight the need for constant vigilance. The crisis is expanding and ongoing. So, in that way, when the pandemic arrived in 2020, it fit right into the plot because it is very much a natural disaster exacerbated by human behavior. Even though the exact causes of the Covid pandemic are uncertain, global warming creates habitat loss and climate migration which bring wildlife and humans into close quarters where dangerous viruses can form.
Q: As with your other books, such as Float and Highwire Acts, in Arroyo Circle you tackle how we all, humans and nonhumans, struggle to adapt to a changing world. How does addressing these topics as a writer affect your own experience living through this time period?
A: One of the driving issues in Arroyo Circle is human carelessness, how we have not given Nature due respect and care, hence greatly increasing the frequency and intensity of disasters, natural and otherwise. Humans see what we want and go for it, not considering how it’s going to affect the interconnected web of life. I do a great deal of research on how a warming climate is going to change the world as we know it, and the more I learn the more urgent it all becomes. I try to take care in my own life, like opting out of single-use plastics or going solar, but the problem is so big that only global governments working together are really going to slow down the warming of the earth. So, for me, voting for candidates who understand the stakes is the biggest environmental act of all.
Q: Your characters include a homeless scientist, a hoarder, a devastated mother, and a middle-aged woman desperately trying to stay afloat. What inspired this cast of diverse, complex characters, and how did they come together so seamlessly in the book?
A: My brother was a homeless alcoholic for much of his life, and when he died of cirrochis in 2017 I began writing Arroyo Circle. My brother wasn’t a scientist, but my grief wanted to explore his experience of the world through Les. The hoarder, with whom I am far too familiar but will not name names, is emblematic of capitalism and consumerism gone badly askew, to the point that she is killing herself with stuff, in the same way the world is killing itself with stuff. As for the devastated mother, when my children were young, I had a t-shirt that read “Oh my God, I left the baby on the bus,” which perfectly reflected my anxieties as a mother. I feared that I would be distracted by something stupid and that would put my children in danger. And then there’s Shelley, the house manager for the hoarder, who evolved out of a friend’s real-life incident with the police in Boulder years ago. My friend’s life did not spin out of control after this, but Shelley’s did. Except for Les, all the characters have carelessness in common, which in this case means a total disregard for how their actions impact the earth. Les, for all his many faults, is the moral center of the book.
Q: A question about process: Part of Arroyo Circle has been published as a shorter work. Did this novel begin as a short story, or did you later realize that part of the novel worked as standalone pieces? How was writing Arroyo Circle similar and/or different than your other novels?
A: Sometimes in the writing of a novel, I’ll realize that a chapter or section I’ve already written can stand alone as a short story. In Arroyo Circle however, when the pandemic arrived, I jumped way ahead in the plot to write a short story called “Flying Home” about Covid. At that time, it was hard to write about anything else since the lockdown and encroaching doom was so all-encompassing. I never had Covid myself, but many people I knew had, plus it was heavily documented in the media. Later, when I got to the pandemic in the second half of the novel, the plot and characters had morphed since I had written “Flying Home,” so the story had to be rearranged a bit to enter the flow. Other than this, the writing process was the same for Arroyo Circle as it was for my other novels. I start with a single image or idea, usually one that involves the environment or animals, then let characters develop as I start piecing together a plot. There is always a lot of research involved, since it’s important to get the climate science right in fiction.
Q: The catastrophic events in the book are balanced by acts of mercy. Do you consider this while writing — portraying life in all its challenges while still offering glimpses of hope?
A: It is so easy to write dystopian fiction. It is much harder in times of climate upheaval and mass extinctions to be positive and express hope for any sort of recognizable future. When writing Arroyo Circle, even during the darkest scenes, I kept looking for opportunities for the characters to experience some hope and joy. Les finds it all around him in the natural world, but for other characters, learning to find joy outside of material goods is near impossible. Hope, too, is something that must be cultivated. Learning to give and accept help is often part of that journey. We must help one another or perish together.
Q: You’re a successful writer in many genres: short stories, memoir (Stanford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s), and, of course, novels — and you also write reviews and essays. Do you have a favorite genre? How does writing in different genres inform your writing style overall?
A: Fiction is my favorite genre because the possibilities are endless. It is a very flexible medium for whatever it is a writer has going in the brain. I like to do reviews so I can observe how other writers are flexing that muscle. Reviews and essays clear the writing palate, making me use a different part of my brain, but no genre is harder or easier than the other. And neither one is less real than the other. Non-fiction is writing and learning through information, whereas fiction is writing and learning through imagination. We need both.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from reading Arroyo Circle?
A: I hope that readers will learn to see the world as Les sees it, so absolutely wondrous and amazing. And fragile. To save the earth, you have to love it first.
Q: Tell us what you’re working on next.
A: In the past few years I’ve been playing with speculative fiction, meaning fiction that imagines what the world might look like in the future if we do nothing to stop or slow the destruction of it. The first story, “Good Job, Robin,” was included in my fiction collection, Highwire Act, and other stories have followed. They are connected through the same characters, a young couple who struggle to enjoy life as they restore a world where every bit of progress, even the hooting of an owl, involves science and human perseverance. Their lives are challenging, but not dystopian. I’m looking forward to writing more of these stories and getting them into book form.
Readers, you can learn more about JoeAnn (and her event schedule) here, and you can buy Arroyo Circle anywhere books are sold, including here.
Midge Raymond is a co-founder of Ashland Creek Press. She is the author of the novel My Last Continent and the award-winning short story collection Forgetting English. Her suspense novel, Devils Island, co-authored with John Yunker, is forthcoming from Oceanview Publishing in 2024, and her novel Floreana is forthcoming from Little A in 2025.
