Maria Popova ( bg, Мария Попова; born 28 July 1984) is a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist, book author, poet, and writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism that has found wide appeal both for her writing and for the visual stylistics that accompany it.
In 2006, she started the
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
''Brain Pickings'', an online publication that she has fought to maintain advertisement-free. The blog, renamed to ''The Marginalian'' upon its 15th birthday in 2021, features her writing on books, the arts, philosophy, culture, and other subjects.
In addition to her writing and related speaking engagements, she has served as an
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Futures of Entertainment Fellow, as the editorial director at the higher education
social network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
Lore
Lore may refer to:
* Folklore, acquired knowledge or traditional beliefs
* Oral lore or oral tradition, orally conveyed cultural knowledge and traditions
Places
* Loré, former French commune
* Loré (East Timor), a city and subdistrict in Lau ...
, and has written for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', ''
Wired UK
''Wired UK'' is a bimonthly magazine that reports on the effects of science and technology. It covers a broad range of topics including design, architecture, culture, the economy, politics and philosophy. Owned by Condé Nast Publications, it is ...
'', and other publications. Since 2010, she has resided in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York. She is the creator of "The Universe in Verse", a large-scale annual celebration of science and the natural world through poetry.
Early life
Maria Popova was born on 28 July 1984 in Bulgaria.
Popova's parents are ethnic Bulgarians who, as noted by Bruce Feiler for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', "met as teenage exchange students in Russia ...
r father ... an engineering student who later became an Apple salesman ... her mother ... studying library science".
In interview, Popova states that in childhood, one of her grandmothers often read to her from a collection of encyclopedias.
As recounted in interview to Geoff Wolinetz of ''Bundle.com'', Popova first worked when she was about 8 years old,
making the Bulgarian yarn
folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...
dolls called
martenitsa
A Martenitsa ( bg, мартеница, ; mk, мартинка, martinka; el, μάρτης, mártis; ro, mărțișor; al, verore) is a small piece of adornment, made of white and red yarn and usually in the form of two dolls, a white male and ...
s, worn beginning on the first of March where Popova describes selling them on the street as children would sell drinks at a
lemonade stand
A lemonade stand is a business that is commonly owned and operated by a child or children, to sell lemonade. The concept has become iconic of youthful summertime American culture to the degree that parodies and variations on the concept exist ...
.
Undergraduate education and early work
Popova graduated from the
American College of Sofia
The American College of Sofia (ACS) (Bulgarian: ) is a school in Bulgaria, located in the capital city of Sofia.
The college was founded in 1860 and is regarded as the oldest American educational institution outside the United States.This title i ...
in Bulgaria, a secondary school, in 2003. She relocated to attend the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
,
where she earned a degree in communications, though for years, up to 2012, her grandmother had wanted her to get an
MBA
A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...
.
Popova paid for her tuition by working four part-time jobs on top of a full college course load: as an advertising representative for ''
The Daily Pennsylvanian
''The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc.'' is the independent student media organization of the University of Pennsylvania. The DP, Inc. publishes The Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper, 34th Street Magazine, and Under the Button, as well as five newslette ...
'', as an intern for a local writer, as an employee for a work-study job at the
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is a theatre, dance and world music venue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It helped to popularize the works of composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass; the Center has also hosted shows by performer ...
, and as a staff member for a small start-up advertising agency in Philadelphia.
In 2005, while Popova worked at an advertising agency, she noticed that her co-workers were circulating information within the advertising industry around the office for inspiration. However, Popova thought creativity was better sparked with exposure to information outside of the industry one was familiar with. In an effort to stir creativity, she regularly sent emails to the entire office containing five things that had nothing to do with advertising, but were meaningful, interesting, or important.
Because of the popularity of the emails, Popova felt that there was an "intellectual hunger for that sort of cross-disciplinary curiosity and self-directed learning."
She enrolled in a night class to learn web design, took Brain Pickings online, and let the project grow organically.
Relocation to the United States
Popova describes the period of coming to the U.S. to Hannah Levintova of ''
Mother Jones
Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...
''; in this 2012 interview she states:
I didn't immigrate. I'm here on a visa, and I'm not an American citizen. I don't know if you followed the ... situation in 2007 and 2008? ... Every year, the government has a visa quota—they will give, say, 65,000 H1-B work visas for foreigners who are going to work in the country for an American company. And so, normally, they would open up the application process, and the quota would run out in the first three weeks... So, after graduation, I had a job ined up and we applied for that visa, but that was the year “Visagate” happened: The first day of applications, for the first time in history, the government got three times their quota on the very first day. So, they panicked and thought the only thing to do was to make it a raffle for everyone that applied on the first day, and then automatically reject everyone after that. So, we’d filed for the first day, but I was in the two-thirds that didn’t get it, so the whole envelope got returned unopened. So then I got the OPT ptional Practical Trainingwhich entitles you to a year’s worth of work with a company within the scope of your major. We tried again in 2008, and same thing—the whole envelope got returned unopened. So, I had to leave the country! I went back to Bulgaria for a year.
Popova describes returning to Bulgaria in 2008 in interview to the Bulgarian news journal ''Capital'', and how she and a trio of friends organized a conference modeled after the American
TED Talks
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
, which they called "TEDxBG". Popova further describes the outcome of the events—her eventual visa receipt—to ''Mother Jones'': "When the application process lightened up... I moved to LA—which I really resented more than anyone’s ever resented a city in the history of resenting cities. And now I’m finally in New York, and I’m here to stay."
As of 2012, she was living in Brooklyn.
Work as a writer
Popova has written for ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'',
''
Wired UK
''Wired UK'' is a bimonthly magazine that reports on the effects of science and technology. It covers a broad range of topics including design, architecture, culture, the economy, politics and philosophy. Owned by Condé Nast Publications, it is ...
'',
''
GOOD
In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, ph ...
'',
''
The Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'', and
NiemanLab
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at Harvard. It was founded in February 1938 as the result of a $1.4 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of ' ...
.
In 2006, she began the blog ''Brain Pickings'' as an email sent each week to seven of her friends. Krista Tippett in ''
On Being
''On Being'' is a podcast and a former public radio program. Hosted by Krista Tippett, it examines what it calls the "animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?"
Radio program and ...
'' describes it as "
w a website, Twitter feed, and weekly digest... cover
nga wide variety of cultural topics: history, current events, and images and texts from the past."
It includes several sections and has graphics, photographs, and illustrations in addition to written content.
As of December 2012, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' was reporting that the blog had "1.2 million readers a month and 3m page views".
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter (born September 27, 1958) is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist and public commentator. From 2002 to 2009, she was the Dean of Princeton University's School of Public and Internat ...
describes Popova's blog as "like walking into the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
and having somebody give you a customized, guided tour."
Popova is also author of ''Figuring'', published by
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
in 2019., and ''The Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story'', published by Enchanted Lion Books in 2021, and co-editor of ''A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader'', published by Enchanted Lion Books in 2018, and
In ''Figuring'', which appeared at No. 5 on the ''New York Times'' bestseller list upon publication, Popova examines connections between a variety of scientists, writers, and artists, many of them women, and how they created meaning in their lives. ''Figuring'' won the 2019
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Since 1980, the ''Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added in 1991), history, mystery/thriller ( ...
in the Science and Technology category.
Side projects and partnerships
In addition to running Brain Pickings, Popova has a number of side projects. She maintains a
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
account, and a newsletter. In 2012, she created the "Literary Jukebox", a sub-site where she matches quotes from books with songs. "Music, for me, is an enormous trigger of mnemonic associations – of time, place, mood, emotion, the smell of fresh-cut grass behind your best friend’s house when you were 18 and first heard that song."
Popova also has various partnerships with prominent organizations. She is an
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Futures of Entertainment Fellow. Additionally, Popova serves as the editorial director at the higher education
social network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
Lore
Lore may refer to:
* Folklore, acquired knowledge or traditional beliefs
* Oral lore or oral tradition, orally conveyed cultural knowledge and traditions
Places
* Loré, former French commune
* Loré (East Timor), a city and subdistrict in Lau ...
, run by Noodle.
She edits ''Explore'', a partnership site with the Noodle educational search company.
Content selection and output
Popova filters through the large amounts of content she reads each day through a detailed selection process. When choosing content for Brain Pickings, she asks herself three things:
When choosing material to publish on Brain Pickings, she aims to "share content that is meaningful. Often, it’s timeless."
Popova also seeks out content that has narrative. As she states, "Curation is a form of pattern recognition – pieces of information or insight which over time amount to an implicit point of view."
Popova publishes this information in tweet form when she does not have much to add. On the other hand, she publishes this as blog posts when she feels she can deepen the subject with historical background or additional materials.
Awards and recognitions
Maria Popova has received numerous instances of media recognition for her work. In 2012, she was named number 51 of the 100 most creative people in business by
''Fast Company'' magazine.
Popova was featured in ''30 under 30'' by Forbes as one of the most influential individuals in Media and was listed on “The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012 List” by
''Time'' magazine.
Popova's work has also been spotlighted and profiled in publications such as ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''.
Criticism
Affiliate advertising
Popova has been very vocal about her dislike for traditional advertising, and has repeatedly expressed her pride on being advertising-free:
In 2013, Popova received criticism on how she championed her site to be "ad-free" and a "labor of love" that requires reader donations to sustain itself, while she covertly received revenue from affiliate advertising from Amazon. Tom Bleymaier, founder of a startup in Palo Alto, California, wrote a post on an anonymous
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
blog calling Popova out for her actions. Using his own calculations, Bleymaier extrapolated that Popova could make anywhere between $240,000 and $432,000 a year with these affiliate advertisements.
This received much media attention from sources such as
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
and
PandoDaily
PandoDaily, or simply Pando, was a web publication offering technology news, analysis, and commentary, with a focus on Silicon Valley and startup companies.
History
PandoDaily was started by former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy on January 16, 201 ...
.
This incident has sparked a more general debate on the Internet about whether or not affiliate advertisements are "sneaky" or "deceptive". Popova has since updated her donation page on Brain Pickings to acknowledge the fact that she receives income from affiliate advertisements.
Curator's Code
In 2012, Popova created ''The Curator's Code'', a project (now suspended) by Popova with input from designer Kelli Anderson. The Curator's Code is a code of conduct for curators on the web to use. This proposed method is an attempt to codify source attribution on the internet to ensure that the intellectual labor of information discovery is honored.
Under the code, the "via" symbol indicates direct discovery, where the "hat tip" symbol indicates an indirect link of discovery.
The Curator's Code was controversial, and received mixed responses. The announcement of this project elicited feedback from one blogger who "worr
edabout the meaning of curation".
In that blog post, Marco Arment stated that "codifying 'via' links with confusing symbols is solving the wrong problem".
Most criticism of The Curator's Code voiced uncertainty about its ability to solve the problems of online attribution. Some critics argued that the problems of online attribution are not due to a lack of codified syntax, but rather due to the "economics and realities of online publishing".
Personal life
Popova has sought to maintain a degree of personal anonymity, with emphasis on her writing rather than on herself.
Popova has participated in amateur
bodybuilding
Bodybuilding is the use of progressive resistance exercise to control and develop one's muscles (muscle building) by muscle hypertrophy for aesthetic purposes. It is distinct from similar activities such as powerlifting because it focuses ...
. She states in an interview that she "fell into" the world of bodybuilding during her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania when her dormitory's resident adviser recommended that she compete in a bodybuilding show, although she no longer competes.
References
Further reading
*
*
* (under
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license)
* Earlier used citation whose content appears to have been plagiarised from ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' and other sources.
External links
The Marginalian(formerly Brain Pickings)
Popova's Twitter accountCurator's Code now suspended
Explore(the original Lore collaboration)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Popova, Maria
1984 births
Living people
Bulgarian women writers
Bulgarian expatriates in the United States
Bulgarian bloggers
Bulgarian women bloggers
People from Brooklyn
American women bloggers
American bloggers
The Daily Pennsylvanian people
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania alumni
Shorty Award winners
21st-century American women