American teen superstar and public intellectual Tavi Gevinson is coming to Toronto again to launch the second yearbook of Rookie, her online magazine for girls.
Writing for The Toronto Review of Books about last year’s Rookie Yearbook One (also from the Canadian press Drawn & Quarterly), Ryerson English Professor Laura Fisher said that
the book synthesizes images, words, and moods into something like an alt-girl utopia. Rookie Yearbook One features photo sets of female skateboarders, Cindy Sherman-inspired film stills, and so many girl gangs, as well as essays that cover everything from street harassment, feminism, and deep sea life to pragmatic how-to pieces on giving bitchface and applying mod eye makeup. Gevinson has an uncanny ability to be sophisticated and knowing in her approach to the cultural landscape, without exhibiting the kind of irony or condescension you might expect from someone who sat next to Anna Wintour at New York Fashion Week and counts Miranda July, David Sedaris, and John Waters among her fans.
At this year’s launch at Magic Pony, Sheila Heti (Toronto’s prized author of, most recently, How Should a Person Be?) will join Gevinson in an “intimate Q&A,” which sounds sort of like it could be the best thing ever—or at least one of the more novel book events of the season.
The $40 ticket price includes access to the onstage interview and to the “masquerade” dance party afterwards, as well as a copy of the book.
Magic Pony is little: get your ticket quick.