A Cigarette Lit Backwards

Set in the punk-rock scene of the early 2000s, this sharply observed, darkly comic literary novel explores how far one young woman will go to find acceptance.

Kat is dying to be accepted by the North Carolina punks; she is totally desperate to seem cool. At a punk show, she ends up backstage with a rock star and gets noticed by a photojournalist. Then—a dream come true for Kat—her reputation skyrockets the next morning when an online magazine publishes pictures of her backstage, deeming her a groupie icon.

But to maintain this notoriety, Kat makes a series of devastating mistakes, and soon enough, she becomes unrecognisable to herself and others. The truth, as always, comes out. Kat had already lost most of her friends by then, and after the Rolling Stones story, she's got no shot at redemption, so she runs off to New York City to find the journalist who started this mess in the first place.

Téa Hacic-Vlahović’s A Cigarette Lit Backwards is a sometimes funny, often brutally honest examination of growing up. It’s dark and daring, unflinchingly examining the yearning to be noticed and accepted and the lengths one will go to get there.