News about Elif Batuman

Jensen McRae, the Central Los Angeles coffee shop, looks straight out of BookTok, with open hardcover notebooks, athleisure, and matcha lattes aplenty. A jazz trio competes on Instagram, with a trending sound scoring an Instagram Reel. I'm sure this place will be a hit with the 25-year-old indie-folk singer-songwriter and self-proclaimed "word girl," who claims this is her first in-person interview. "I was really fastidious in my care for myself," she reflects on the past few years. Her work has already been broadcast on NPR, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, but her interviews about Zoom have all revolved around the pandemic, an unavoidable necessity considering that McRae's career began during the pandemic.