Hailey Myers interviews A.E. Copenhaver about her novel On My Days of Dark Green EuphoriaHailey: Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your work, Athena. My Days of Dark Green Euphoria is such a wildly funny and richly thematic novel. I can’t wait to discuss it in depth, but first, I’d love to discuss your approach to writing and veganism.
How does your environmentally conscious and vegan philosophy influence your writing?
A.E. Copenhaver: Thank you so much for your kind response to Euphoria! I absolutely loved writing this novel, and I continue to find Cara’s perspective at times both hilarious and astute. (I am still beaming with gratitude to have had Ashland Creek Press publish this novel—sometimes I still can’t believe it’s real!)
It’s hard for me to determine where my environmental consciousness and vegan philosophy end and my own self begins, especially in terms of writing. And while writing doesn’t require me to define that distinction, creative writing becomes the place where I can explore the possibility of it. With the protagonist of Euphoria, Cara Foster, for example, I had the chance to tease out what might result from a character suffering with climate grief and eco-anxiety—but with the volume turned up to 11 and with a whopping side of absurdity, for added color and texture.
From a more philosophical perspective, I’ll add that in recent years—when people ask me why I’m vegan, for example—I have started explaining this decision and, consequently, this dramatically altered perspective of the world that comes with living as a vegan—in terms of joy. I see my various attempts over my life to be pescatarian, vegetarian (and back and forth between those options), and then finally landing on veganism eleven years ago, as a pursuit of joy. And it has been through this process that I learned—slowly and often painfully—that the more decisions I can make that are grounded in compassion, the deeper and greater the joy I experience. Writing that explores the degree to which we can or should or want or hope to act compassionately—and create greater joy both for ourselves and all human and more-than-human beings—I think will always be my preferred creative realm.
What do you want readers to take away from your work?
A.E. Copenhaver: I wish for readers to have the space to contemplate others’ perspectives. For readers who find Cara unlikeable, irritating, or grating, I hope they point to specific moments in Cara’s story and say, “See? This right here is why I think so.” And for readers who find comfort, validation, or even joy in Cara’s story, I hope they point to specific moments and say, “See? Right here. This is why she gives me hope.” Above all, though, I hope Cara’s story plants a tiny seed. And I hope this tiny seed is busy at work for every reader even if they never notice it.
What do you think of veganism in art? What role do you think art can have in conversations about veganism, animal rights, and environmentalism?
A.E. Copenhaver: When I was writing my master’s thesis in Norwich, England circa summer 2009, I remember cycling up a very slight hill and hearing this matter-of-fact voice in my head. It said something that eventually influenced the direction of my thesis, something like: fiction [art] is the place where we have the freedom to consider alternative ethical perspectives—without consequences. This is not to say that art doesn’t bring or influence real world consequences. What the voice meant to me then (and even more so now), was that art is the mechanism through which we can experience true freedom of thought. We can, through Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, for example, experience the psyche of a murderous pedophile without committing ourselves to enacting these atrocities in real life. And through My Days of Dark Green Euphoria’s Cara Foster, we can live within the psyche of a vegan woman suffering from extreme eco-anxiety as she attempts to find relief. (Whether we want to subject ourselves to either of these perspectives is another question.) But for me art is the only place where we can experience these perspectives without outwardly having to change ourselves or harm others in the real world. And yet!—how changed are we for having experienced these perspectives through art? And how can we ever measure such influence within our own psyches?
It’s in this sense that I think art is essential to bringing forth new ways of being for humanity and our greater living world. I hope in the not-too-distant future we reach a point where murder, abuse, war, exploitation, ecocide, species extinction, and any other variety of atrocity we might fancy partaking in could be channeled as creatively as we wish through art—including virtual and augmented realities—instead of as unavoidable lived experiences we are forced to face over the course of our lives.
So veganism explored through artwork such as novels is a great way to ask questions—because Cara’s entire existence is hypothetical. Why does one reader, for instance, feel uncomfortable or even annoyed when Cara expresses grief and rage about the treatment of animals? Why does another reader think her grief and rage were comical or absurd (aside from the fact the novel is satirical)? Those are the kinds of questions that we can ask when we see a vegan perspective represented in fiction, for example.
Asking these questions in the realm of a fictional story is valuable because readers can judge, interrogate, criticize, or celebrate aspects of these characters without having to offer up their own or other people’s lives for such attention. What I love about Cara and her obsession with Millie is readers can point to instances in the text and say, “here’s why I think vegans are unhinged,” and, at the same time, other readers can point to that exact same moment in the text and say, “here’s why I think vegans are the only sane people right now.” Isn’t that difference somehow important to figure out or at least acknowledge? To me, fiction is the place to do that. That both of these perspectives can be seen in this novel is so fun. But asking readers why they think what they do is where the real fun begins.
When we meet Cara, she’s bearing witness to humanity’s ecological destruction, while on her own self-destructive path. The book feels like a confessional. How did you find the voice?
A.E. Copenhaver: I’m so glad that Cara’s confessional quality comes across—because she is absolutely laying it all out there, for better or worse.
Cara’s voice came to me when I was with friends and family in San Luis Obispo, California. We were at a restaurant, and I had to walk outside to write down the concept this voice presented. From the moment that nugget arrived in my conscience, I obsessively started planning scenes. I couldn’t stop. The more rein I gave to Cara, the louder this voice became. And while the concept of this novel belongs to Cara and her fictional self, the self-destructive path—her relentless desire to experience relief from mental, emotional, or physical suffering—is something that I think many people have experienced to some degree or another, myself included. Cara’s voice is often so excoriating that when some of her more inflammatory moments came through, I was astounded and delighted, like knocked off my chair, words flying everywhere as I attempted to bottle this hilariously judgmental character.
In one of my favorite moments from the book, Cara is hiking with Renée and sees buzzards. She imagines a zero-waste death in which buzzards eat her body, and it’s bizarrely beautiful. Can you describe how the ecological significance and symbolism of birds influenced the story?
A.E. Copenhaver: I am so glad you enjoyed that scene! It’s one of my favorites, too.
In third grade I had the distinct honor of adopting baby chickens my class hatched from eggs in incubators. At the end of our time with the chickens in class, I was concerned about what might happen to them “after this”—meaning after my class was “done” with them. Where would they go? Would they be OK? I answered these questions by taking all the chickens home myself. Incidentally, my family has always been the kind to end up with rescued, unwanted, lost, injured, or otherwise struggling animals, so the chickens weren’t any major imposition as far as my eight year old self was concerned.
Growing up with chickens, seeing how each had their own personality, how they showed their emotions—joy, excitement, fear, anxiety, and above all, intense curiosity—and seeing how they communicated and formed their own little family were not only really fun experiences for me and my sisters, but also our friendships with the chickens informed our early understanding of animals as individuals.
So I carry a lot of affection and wonder and compassion for birds. Birds, primarily chickens and turkeys, are, by numbers, some of the most abused species of domestic animals, behind fish and shellfish. At the time of this interview (March 2025), the Animal Clock estimates 9,346,660,000 (9.35 BILLION) chickens are killed annually in the United States for food; 223,003,000 turkeys face the same end. (Fish and shellfish are killed annually in the trillions.)
Getting back to your question, though, about the ecological significance of birds: like all wild animals, vultures really do play a vital role in our ecosystem! As birds of prey who eat carrion, vultures are responsible for processing dead bodies—they provide a service to all the rest of us because they diminish the spread of disease and reduce the accumulation of rotting flesh in our ecosystem. I have at times pulled over while driving to move a dead animal’s body from the road just so that the vultures can more safely access the carcass. On the one hand I am heartbroken for animals killed by cars; on the other, I want to help the vultures do their job. I experience a very specific kind of grief when I see a committee of vultures looking at a dead animal in the middle of the road without any way to get to the carcass.
Growing up on the Central Coast of California just a stone’s throw from Big Sur, home of the elusive and marvelous California Condor, who is a type of vulture, I feel intense reverence for vultures. I remember seeing a condor in the wild in Big Sur flying along the cliffs below where my family and I were having a picnic. I was blown away by how enormous they were—to me condors (and vultures) are very special. I love looking up and seeing them soaring along the ridges above my childhood home—to me they’re like old friends.
Also, if we can take a moment to appreciate the collective nouns associated with vultures: A committee, as noted above, is used to define when multiple vultures are resting on the ground or in a tree. And a wake describes when a bunch of vultures are in the act of devouring a carcass. And I absolutely love how a formation of vultures soaring in the sky is known as a kettle—because according to various researchers, most notably ornithologist Donald Heintzelman, the vultures soaring in thermal updrafts look like the contents of something boiling in a kettle. (This term kettle can also be used to describe the structured soaring behaviors of other birds of prey, too, like hawks.)
Can you tell me about your process for writing satire and finding humor in serious topics?
A.E. Copenhaver: Satire to me feels like it should be illegal—both because of how fun it is to read and write it, and because of how effective it is at illuminating absurdity, injustice, atrocity, and the vehement normalization of these realities.
As far as my process for writing satire and finding humor in serious topics, I think it’s more of a mental muscle that feels good to flex than a specific process I engage. Satire just feels good to write. I can easily move back and forth between opposing perspectives. I can hear vegan voices, and I can hear anti-vegan voices, and I can hear voices, like Millie’s, that are completely unaware of veganism. And it’s the space between them where satire arises (from my perspective anyway). That’s why it was so fun to portray Millie without a care in the world and Cara inordinately burdened with the cares of the world. Both can be hilarious, especially when compared side by side. So as an answer to the question, I’d say my process is more like taking two opposing concepts—someone suffering from solastalgia and someone blissfully unbothered by pretty much anything—and overlaying them, seeing what colors and shapes appear.
When Cara is contemplating utopia she says she would have walked away from Omelas (in reference to the short story by Ursula K. Le Guin.) Are there other authors, artists, or activists who influence your work?
A.E. Copenhaver: Ursula K. Le Guin, definitely, yes. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a haunting and powerful story that I think about way more than I think is “normal.” Some of my favorite authors whom I return to repeatedly year after year include Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Octavia E. Butler, David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas), Jane Austen, bell hooks, and Carol J. Adams. I also read tons of non-fiction and have recently mowed down—one after another—books and essays by feminist philosophers and authors Kate Manne, Amanda Montei, Leslie Jamison, Lyz Lenz, Zawn Villines, and the pseudonymous Kate Hamilton. (These folks are currently informing my next manuscript.) And as someone who experiences synesthesia (like our pal Nabokov), I’m also greatly influenced and inspired by music. Listening to certain music comes not only with colors but entire scenes that unfold in my mind. I could never list all the musicians who literally color the mythological scapes of my mind, but Enya, Pogo, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, SZA, Beethoven, Shania Twain, The Darkness, The Who, and Buddy Holly are some of my most listened to artists.
Did writing Cara’s unfiltered thoughts feel cathartic in any way?
A.E. Copenhaver: Yep! The crucible of her character allowed for some really surprising and searing hot takes to come through. That’s part of the joy of creative expression—I could have never known such thoughts could be formulated in such a way were it not for the precise combination of strengths and weaknesses that her character embodies.
Also, I’d like to enjoy an etymology nerd moment and share that the word catharsis comes from the Greek word katharsis meaning to cleanse or to purge. And very closely related to katharsis is the word to describe the sub-order of New World vultures, which is named for the Greek cathartes, meaning cleanser or purifier.
Legacy and utopia came up as themes in the book. How useful do you think it is for activists to consider these ideas?
A.E. Copenhaver: I recently learned about the Parable of the Choir. This concept speaks to how a choir can sustain impossibly long notes because each singer can stagger their breathing, dropping out and returning to the note (or chord) as needed to sustain the sound without any apparent lapses. I understand that some social justice activists like to use this metaphor to visualize liberation efforts over time—we each can take turns breathing into the sound of transformation as we are able. Each of us has a unique voice to contribute, and even if we have to drop out to take a breath, others are still singing while we rest. So I think the question of legacy and the concept of utopia can work hand in hand, so long as our understandings of both are sufficiently revolutionary. In other words, it’s useful for activists to consider these ideas so long as they are used as tools to help us carry and amplify each person’s unique contribution along the greater arc towards total liberation. I mean: We are not all meant to be revolutionaries and martyrs burned at the stake, or even protesters or orators. We won’t all be up on the soapbox shouting into the crowd at once. We need a multiplicity of diverse actions sustained over centuries. And sometimes the most revolutionary thing we can do will never ever be noticed or written or acknowledged. Doing these acts anyway is what is revolutionary and necessary to leave a legacy that paves the way for utopia—which is, in my mind, a future world where all beings are free to live without harm, domination, violence, and oppression.
