JIA TOLENTINO

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror. Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, received her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, and got her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn.

Trick Mirror, published in 2019, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book and the PEN America Diamondstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. It was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, GQ, and the Paris Review. The book has been translated into eleven languages and is out in paperback now. There’s also an audiobook, narrated by the author. 

Music	Robyn Has What You Want, 2018 Let’s Not ‘Marvin Gaye’ and Get It On, 2016 Notes on 21st Century Mystic Carly Rae Jepsen, 2015 Taylor Swift Is Definitely In Her Zone, 2015 Why I Have to Be So Rude, 2014
Books	Ocean Vuong’s Life Sentences, 2019 Halle Butler’s “The New Me,” 2019 Where Millennials Come From, 2018 Ivanka Trump’s ‘The Trump Card,’ 2016
Internet	Please, My Wife, She’s Very Online, 2019 The Rage of the Incels, 2018 The Land of the Large Adult Son, 2017 The Worst Year Ever, Until Next Year, 2016
Feminism	How a Woman Becomes a Lake, 2018 The Rising Pressure of the #MeToo Backlash, 2018 How Men Like Weinstein Implicate Their Victims, 2017 How Empowerment Became Something to Buy, 2016 What About David Bowie & Lori Maddox?,  2016 No Offense, 2015
Features	Athleisure Time, 2019 Marlon James & the African ‘Game of Thrones’, 2018 The Vapors, 2018 The Important, Inappropriate Literary Man, 2016
Interviews	A Woman Who Got an Abortion at 32 Weeks, 2016 A Chat with a Man Who Had Sex With a Dolphin, 2015 Talking to William Finnegan About ‘Barbarian Days,’ 2015 Dionne Osborne, Drake’s Vocal Coach Extraordinaire, 2014
Personal	The Most American Thing, 2017 All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me, 2016 Cheerleaders 4 Christ, 2015
TV	On Finally Watching ‘Girls,’ 2017 Shark Tank, 2015 What Made the OC Great, Bitch,  2013
Movies	The Oscars Are Fucking Weird, 2018 Beauty and the Bestiality, 2017 Watching ‘Arrival’ After the Election, 2016 We Are Not Your Friends, 2015

You can find me: 

• trying to figure life out at Interview Mag

• talking to Hilton Als about Joan Didion on Thursday Feb 4 at 8 PM EST with WritersBloc

• talking to Patricia Lockwood about her new novel on Tuesday Feb 16 at 6 PM EST with Politics & Prose

• talking to Julia Turshen about her new cookbook on Tuesday March 2 at 8 PM EST with Left Bank Books

• talking to Kazuo Ishiguro about his new novel on Thursday March 4 at 6 PM EST with PEN America x the Asian American Writers Workshop

• talking to Rebecca Solnit about her memoir on Tuesday March 9 at 8 PM EST with Powell’s 

More information about Jia’s work can be found at Longform or Catapult or Brooklyn Magazine or Mythos (where these photos, taken by Elena Mudd, are from), or this Elle profile, this SSENSE interview, this second Longform interview, or this talk with the Creative Independent.

For speaking engagements and similar inquiries, please contact Jia’s agent, Amy Williams.

@jiatolentino on Twitter
@jiatortellini on Instagram

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