This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online.
This is event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
If you would like a signed book (or books) but can't attend in person, you may click here to pre-order signed copies of Be That Way and Hope's previous books.
If you decide to attend and purchase the authors' books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop's. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount. Thank you!
Be That Way
Seventeen-year-old Christine keeps a journal of an eventful year in her life in the mid-90s, while juggling troubled friendships and looking for love. It's January 1, 1996, and high school junior Christine wants more than anything to be that cool girl everyone notices, like her gorgeous best friend, Landry. She usually hates New Year's resolutions, but this year she vows to be that shiny kind of girl--and record it all in her diary through prose, illustration, and comics. When Landry drops her, Christine is surprised to discover just how much she doesn't miss her and her drama. But a misguided kiss with film-obsessed Paul, her only other close friend, also causes a rift, and she finds herself facing a long, lonely summer.
With nothing to lose, Christine finds a new sense of courage. She gets a job at her neighborhood video store, experiments with her art, and becomes romantically entangled with her next-door neighbor Whit, who's either the coolest guy ever or a total jerk. In spite of all this, she doesn't quite feel shiny--until a shocking betrayal shows her the value of the words and drawings she hides in her diary, and she finally understands that she doesn't need to be cool to be noticed--she only needs to be herself.
Eisner-award winning author and illustrator, Hope Larson, has created a powerful coming-of-age story set in a time before the Internet that explores themes of betrayal, first love, self-expression, and the power of art.
Hope Larson is the author of All Summer Long, which was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2018 and an Eisner Award Nominee, as well as the recently published sequel, All Together Now. She also adapted and illustrated A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel, which spent forty-four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and for which she won an Eisner Award. She is additionally the author and illustrator of Salamander Dream, Gray Horses, Chiggers, and Mercury, and the author of Compass South and Knife's Edge, both illustrated by Rebecca Mock. She lives in North Carolina.