Janice Shapiro's Graphic Novel HONORIA In Store Presentation & Book Signing

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Tuesday, April 1st at 7:00 PM when local Berkeley author and artist Janice Shapiro comes to the store to share her debut graphic novel Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship. Janice will be joined in conversation by Briana Loewinshon and will sign copies of her book after the presentaion.

Honoria, the daughter of Sara and Gerald Murphy, who invented the literary “summer on the Riviera” in the 1920s, is used to her parents' endless parties with such luminaries as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, at their splendid house at Cap d’Antibes. When sheltered and unsophisticated Ida visits for a summer, Honoria becomes both her mentor and tormentor, as well as her role model and, finally, her friend.

When Ida is sent away for the summer to stay with the Murphys — friends of her father, but also of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald — she travels from New York to France and, unknowingly, into the artistic epicenter of 1929. There, she meets their haughty, sullen, and precocious daughter, Honoria, and wonders if she can be friends with the prettiest girl in the whole world. In the “perfect inverted world” of adults, one of constant play and leisure — and inebriation, of course — it’s the children who most acutely perceive the pervasive unhappiness bubbling beneath the surface gaiety.

Achingly sad and effortlessly funny, full of the kind of youthful sincerity unclouded by pretenses of age, short story writer and cartoonist Janice Shapiro’s debut graphic novel, Honoria, is the complex story of the education of two young girls who have started moving slowly into womanhood.

JANICE SHAPIRO is the author of Bummer and Other Stories (Soft Skull Press, 2010). Her stories and comics have been published in The Rumpus, Catapult, The North American Review, Electric Literature, The Santa Monica Review, Everyday Genius, and more. Her graphic essay “Good Grief” was included in The Peanuts Papers (Library of America, 2019); another graphic essay, “Crushable-Neil Young,” appeared in Crush: Writers Reflect on Life, Longing and the Power of Their First Celebrity Crush (HarperCollins, 2016). Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship (Fantagraphics, 2025) is her first graphic novel. Janice lives in Berkeley, California with her husband and dog.

BRIANA LOEWINSOHN is an American cartoonist. She is the author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Ephemera, published by Fantagraphics in 2023. It was listed as one of the American Library Association's top graphic novels of 2023 and was awarded the 2023 Foreword Indies Editors Prize for non-fiction. Her new YA graphic novel, Raised By Ghosts, published in February 2025, also with Fantagraphics. Loewinsohn lives in Oakland, CA with her husband and two kids. If she doesn't text you back, she is probably gardening.

THIS EVENT is free but registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 1st.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Host or Publisher Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore