Dear Mini Hardcover by Natalie Norris

Product Details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics (2023-07-04)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 218 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781683967798
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

A vivid debut graphic memoir of adolescent resiliency.

This debut graphic memoir (the first of two books, with Book Two coming in 2025) is a bittersweet coming of age story that chronicles the author’s teenage experiences with sexual assault, PTSD, and resiliency. Dear Mini is not a cautionary tale; rather, it is a vivid (at turns hilariously and uncomfortably so) depiction of adolescent agency in the face of trauma, tracing Norris’s journey from wayward wild-child to resilient adult who has harnessed her voice after almost a decade of silence.

Told in the form of an illustrated letter to an old friend, Dear Mini recounts the author’s experience going abroad to attend a language immersion program in France after her sophomore year of high school. She meets Mini, an Austrian student who shares her predilection for illicit adventure, and the two quickly form a bond that they expect to last well after they go their separate ways. But when Natalie visits Mini ten months after their last face-to-face, something has changed. Their nocturnal exploits veer head-on into disaster. Norris’s spirited and free-flowing page designs and full color cartooning bring her frank voice and personality to life, making Dear Mini one of the most compelling graphic memoir debuts of 2023.

About the Author

Natalie Norris is a cartoonist, teacher, and comics librarian. She has taught and lectured about depicting trauma in graphic memoirs at the 2020 Graphic Medicine Conference, The Larner College of Medicine, the Sequential Artists Workshop, and the Center for Cartoon Studies where she graduated in 2020. Dear Mini (2023) is her first book. She currently resides in Vermont with her chihuahua-poodle rescue, Gwen.