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, 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 twelve languages and is out in paperback now. There’s also an audiobook, narrated by the author. 

Essays

1. Is Abortion Sacred? – TNY – 2022
2. We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe – TNY – 2022
3. Can Motherhood Be a Mode of Rebellion? – TNY – 2022
4. How a Woman Becomes a Lake – TNY – 2018
5. The Most American Thing – TNY – 2017
6. How Men Like Weinstein Implicate Their Victims – TNY – 2017
7. All the Greedy Young Abigail Fishers and Me – Jezebel – 2016
8. How Empowerment Became Something to Buy – NYTMag – 2016
9. What About David Bowie & Lori Maddox? – Jezebel – 2016
10. Cheerleaders 4 Christ – Adult Mag – 2015
11. No Offense – Jezebel – 2015

Reporting

1. Britney Spears’ Conservatorship Nightmare – TNY – 2021
2. Caroline Polachek Takes the Stage – TNY – 2021
3. Athleisure Time – TNY – 2019
4. Marlon James & the African ‘Game of Thrones’ – TNY – 2018
5. The Vapors – TNY – 2018
6. The Important, Inappropriate Literary Man – Jezebel – 2016

Interviews

1. Karen O Has Found a More Joyful Kind of Wildness – TNY – 2022
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. Ocean Vuong’s Life Sentences – TNY – 2019
2. The Oscars Are Fucking Weird – TNY – 2018
3. Robyn Has What You Want – TNY – 2018
4. Let’s Not ‘Marvin Gaye’ and Get It On – TNY – 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