Bio

Alicia Eler Selfie

Alicia Kısmet Eler (they/them) is an art journalist, critic and comedian. They are the author of The Selfie Generation and are currently the visual art critic/reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for the breaking news reporting of George Floyd’s killing. Their work has been published in The Guardian, New York Magazine, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, The Markaz Review and more. Their fiction, which has appeared in Queen Mobs Teahouse and Projecttile Lit, investigates sexuality, second-generation immigrant experiences, and the Turkish diaspora. Alicia grew up in Chicago and is currently based in Minneapolis.

Their first book, The Selfie Generation: How Our Self-Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture, experimentally combined memoir and non-fiction to investigate the oft-misunderstood self-reflective photo. Alicia is an early digital adopter, and was one of the first writers to write extensively about the selfie in a pre-Snapchat, pre-TikTok era. The book received international praise from the BBC to the Sydney Morning Herald. The New York Times said, “Eler’s book alights on the source of the selfie’s power . . . perhaps our much-fussed-over narcissism is not a flaw but a survival tactic.”

Their collaborative essay “How to Win Tinder” for The New Inquiry is a key source for studies of dating app culture, quoted in Le Monde, GQ Spain, and the New Yorker. Thei were featured in GO Magazine’s “100 Women We Love: Class of 2019.” The Daily Dot named her one of the 15 funniest ladies on Twitter, and the Chicago Sun-Times called them an emerging writer to know.

They are based in Minneapolis, have two amazing cats, loves simit (Turkish bagel) and hates gefilte fish.

Contact them at alicia [dot] eler [at] gmail [dot] com. Find them on Twitter (@aliciaeler) and Instagram (@aliciakismeteler). For their comedy-only Instagram, go to @aliciakismetcomedy.

Photo credit: Alicia Kismet Eler (Selfie/Self)

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