ALTA Streaming Brainstorm Series: Jia Tolentino: The Ugliness of Beauty

Join us at the Alta branch where we will be live streaming the first speaker in our Brainstorm series.

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 and 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.

Jia Tolentino will deliver a talk on 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, and public lands. 

The Brainstorm Series is a collaboration between Teton County Library, The Jackson Hole News&Guide, and The Center. Funding for the series is provided by The Teton County Library Foundation & Friends.