The Brainstorm Speaker Series is a series of free events presented by Jackson Hole News & Guide, Teton County Library, and The Center featuring trailblazers who are renowned in their fields and are known for sparking ideas and inspiring conversation. Support for the series comes from Teton County Library Foundation & Friends.

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.

This presentation and commentary surround contemporary ideas of beauty, how these ideas connect surreal artificiality with longstanding global power structures, and an inquiry into whether goodness can still be located in beauty despite the ugliness of its current uses. To be covered, among other topics: the style of the women of the current Republican administration, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, artificial intelligence, Instagram, graphic design, beautiful houses, public lands.