Join First Light Books for an evening with Mallary Tenore Tarpley, a UT Austin professor and longtime journalist whose first book makes room for the part of recovery most stories skip: the middle. SLIP is about the long stretch between sickness and full healing, the place where setbacks are part of the process and progress never stops being possible.

A reception with the author will take place from 6:00PM to 6:30PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.

"At all times, SLIP remains accessible, realistic, and hopeful about the messy and maddening process of recovering from disordered eating. This tremendous book will comfort, inspire, and educate readers. We are lucky that it exists."
—Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group

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About the book

SLIP chronicles Mallary Tenore Tarpley's childhood struggle with an eating disorder through her present-day reckoning with how elusive full recovery can be. It is her story, but it reaches well past it. She interviewed and surveyed hundreds of patients, doctors, and researchers to map how eating disorder treatment works, why so many people fall through the cracks, and what the latest science actually says.

Out of that reporting and her own experience came a new framework she calls "the middle place," the liminal space between sickness and full recovery where slips are accepted as part of healing rather than proof of failure. SLIP sets perfection aside and welcomes healing in all its forms.

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About the author

Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication and the award-winning author of SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.

​SLIP is the 2026 recipient of the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences. It also won first place in the PROSE awards’ Clinical Medicine category and was a finalist in the Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher category.

​While writing the book, Mallary received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, which supported her research and reporting. A journalist by trade, Mallary’s recent articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, and Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard, among other publications. She also publishes a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, featuring writing tips and best practices.

​Mallary lives outside of Austin with her husband and two children.

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About the conversation partner

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin is the author of Real Self-Care, a national bestseller and an NPR Best Book of 2023, now translated into ten languages. She is a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in women's mental health, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine, and a contributor to The New York Times whose essays have helped shift the national conversation on mental health, wellness, and motherhood. She has spent thousands of hours caring for patients navigating burnout, depression, and anxiety.

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