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Mallary Tenore Tarpley

Slip: Life in the Middle of
Eating Disorder Recovery


Now available for pre-order!

Slip chronicles my childhood struggles with an eating disorder to my present-day experiences grappling with the elusiveness of full recovery. The book tells my story, but it also transcends it. I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of patients, doctors, and researchers to provide a deeper understanding of eating disorder treatment, the systematic issues that lead some people to remain without care, and the latest science.

 

This, coupled with my personal experience, led me to develop a groundbreaking new framework around what I call "the middle place” — the liminal space between sickness and full recovery, a place where slips are accepted as part of the process and progress is always possible. Slip puts the idea of perfection aside to welcome healing in all its forms.​ The book will be published by Simon & Schuster, via its Simon Element imprint, in August 2025 and is now available for pre-order wherever you buy books.

Early praise for Slip

"Slip is a gorgeous, paradigm-smashing book that explores the liminal space between sickness and health where so many of us live. Blending memoir and reportage, Slip defies tidy narratives to show us we are not alone when we struggle, when we strive to get better, when we slip." —Emi Nietfeld, author of Acceptance

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"Candid, courageous and meticulously researched, SLIP is a game-changing addition to literature on disordered eating from the perspective of someone in committed recovery. Tarpley’s quest to exercise control in a turbulent world is meaningful and timely, and this book is a necessary read for anyone trying to understand—or grapple with—the dark side of perfectionism." —Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses

Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group

In Slip, Mallary Tenore Tarpley carves out a "middle place" between acute sickness and full recovery for those of us with eating disorders. Tarpley is the perfect guide for this conversation, as she seamlessly blends memoir, reportage, and research. 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. 

Evette Dionne, author of Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul

There is no single image of eating disorders in the United States, but so often, we think about eating disorders as a linear journey with a neat and happy ending. Mallary Tenore beautifully disrupts this narrative with Slip, an erudite memoir that moves us into a new generation in which we’re not defined by our disorders. It’s an essential addition to a canon of memoirs that shift paradigms and push us toward a new idea of what it means to recover and to fully, completely live.

Margo Maine, PhD, author and renowned eating disorder psychologist 

As a seasoned journalist, Tarpley is both an outstanding writer and researcher. This is an unusually comprehensive book with something for everyone, a must-read. Those who have suffered an eating disorder may find a redemptive narrative to guide their recovery. Loved ones will understand more about how to support recovery without expecting perfection. And clinicians, educators, activists and policy makers may decide their narrative should  be less about eradicating eating disorders and more about elucidating them. We need to make space in the middle. In the shadows.

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About Mallary

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Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism and writing professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication and McCombs School of Business. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Dallas Morning News, among other publications. She is the recipient of a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, which helped support her research and writing. Mallary graduated from Providence College and has a master’s of fine arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives outside of Austin, Texas, with her husband and two children. Slip is her first book. 

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