Front of Book

Tavi is capable of both melancholy and fantastic optimism. It’s weird to say, but she seems like a peer, like a fully developed writer, editor and maker of things. She absorbs things and has figured out how to render it in prose that’s fun to read—it’s impressive as a real-time documenting of a teenage girl’s thoughts. And her pop-culture knowledge is weirdly encyclopedic. I remember her writing in some post a few years ago, “This reminded me of a Joni Mitchell song.” And I was like, “Why is anything reminding you of a Joni Mitchell song? You’re 13! Why is that even happening?”

Ira Glass on Tavi Gevinson