Jia Tolentino

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker, the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror, and a screenwriter. Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. She grew up in Texas, went to the University of Virginia, and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize. In 2023, she received a National Magazine Award for her writing on abortion. 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 fourteen languages. There’s also an audiobook, narrated by the author. 

Essays

1. Our Plastic-Surgery Nightmare – TNY – 2026
2. My Brain Finally Broke – TNY – 2025
3. The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment – TNY – 2024
4. Is Abortion Sacred? – TNY – 2022
5. We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe – TNY – 2022
6. Can Motherhood Be a Mode of Rebellion? – TNY – 2022
7. The Age of Instagram Face – TNY – 2019
8. How a Woman Becomes a Lake – TNY – 2018
9. The Most American Thing – TNY – 2017
10. How Men Like Weinstein Implicate Their Victims – TNY – 2017
11. All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me – Jezebel – 2016
12. How Empowerment Became Something to Buy – NYTMag – 2016
13. What About David Bowie & Lori Maddox? – Jezebel – 2016
14. Cheerleaders 4 Christ – Adult Mag – 2015
15. No Offense – Jezebel – 2015

Profiles & Reporting

1. Robyn, On Her Own – TNY – 2025
2. Jennifer Lawrence Goes Dark – TNY – 2025
3. How CoCoMelon Captures Our Children’s Attention – TNY – 2024
4. Who Is Matty Healy? – TNY – 2023
5. Britney Spears’ Conservatorship Nightmare – TNY – 2021
6. Caroline Polachek Takes the Stage – TNY – 2021
7. Athleisure Time – TNY – 2019
8. Marlon James & the African ‘Game of Thrones’ – TNY – 2018
9. The Vapors – TNY – 2018
10. The Important, Inappropriate Literary Man – Jezebel – 2016

Interviews

1. Barbara Ehrenreich Is Not An Optimist, But She Has Hope For the Future – TNY – 2020
2. A Woman Who Got an Abortion at 32 Weeks – Jezebel – 2016
3. A Chat with a Man Who Had Sex With a Dolphin – Jezebel – 2015
4. Talking to William Finnegan About ‘Barbarian Days‘ – Deadspin – 2015
5. Dionne Osborne, Drake’s Vocal Coach Extraordinaire – Jezebel – 2014

Pop Culture

1. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Epiphanies – TNY – 2025
2. Ocean Vuong’s Life Sentences – TNY – 2019
3. A Strange Night at the Oscars – TNY – 2018
4. Let’s Not ‘Marvin Gaye’ and Get It On – NYTMag – 2016
5. Watching ‘Arrival’ After the Election – TNY – 2016
6. Notes on 21st Century Mystic Carly Rae Jepsen – The Awl – 2015
7. Taylor Swift Is Definitely In Her Zone – Jezebel – 2015
8. We Are Not Your Friends – The Awl – 2015
9. Shark Tank – Grantland – 2015
10. Why I Have to Be So Rude – The Hairpin – 2014
11. What Made the OC Great, Bitch  – The Awl – 2013