Jia Tolentino

Jia Tolentino started writing a blog about her life when she was little, was on a reality show as an adolescent, and, just after turning 30, her first book appeared on Barack Obama’s list of favourite reads. Born to Filipino parents, Jia Tolentino (Toronto, Canada, 1988) grew up in Texas. She sang in an a cappella group, turned down a yes from Yale for economic reasons, served in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan and earned a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Michigan. At the same time, she has always existed on the internet, so she is able to explain in the first person how, thanks to gender and class debates, to construct that “I” in the often tricky and sometimes toxic net.

After making waves as a writer at The Hairpin and Jezebel, and writing lots of articles for The New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, she became the youngest staff writer in the history of The New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn, and one of her great obsessions is the Ecce Homo of Borja. Vulture called her the Joan Didion of her generation. Tolentino has recently published Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (Penguin Random House, 2019), a collection of essays about the difficulty of seeing ourselves clearly in these times, so given to a culture that revolves around me-me-me.