Pop-Up Magazine

Pop-Up Magazine was founded in San Francisco in 2009[4] by Douglas McGray, Lauren Smith, Derek Fagerstrom,[5] Evan Ratliff, and Maili Holiman.[6]

McGray says the idea for the show came from trying to get different kinds of storytellers and artists together in the same room. "Filmmakers have their film openings, and artists will have gallery openings, and writers will have their readings. And we're never at the same things together. We thought about the idea of a live magazine as a way to bring these different communities together and bring their communities of fans together."[2]

The first Pop-Up Magazine show was at the 360-seat Brava Theater in San Francisco's Mission District in 2009. Its audience has nearly tripled[7] every year since launching, growing from that 360-seat theater to a 900-seat auditorium in 2010 to a 2,600-member audience in 2011. In the fall of 2015, Pop-Up Magazine went on its first national tour with stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City.[8] In spring of 2016, the show toured again, for a live audience of nearly 10,000 people, in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.[9]

In 2018, Pop-Up Magazine was acquired by Emerson Collective.[10]

Outside of its own tours, Pop-Up Magazine occasionally partners with organizations and public figures for special performances. In 2011, they collaborated with SFMOMA with a show about wine[11] and ESPN the Magazine[12] for a show about sports. In 2013, they produced a night of stories and live music inspired by Beck’s Song Reader, a collection of sheet music written by Beck and published by McSweeneys.[13] And, in 2015 they curated Session 8 of TED2015 in Vancouver, producing a set of 11 stories performed on TED's main stage.[14]

Pop-Up Magazine is produced by California Sunday, Inc., which also publishes an online and print magazine called The California Sunday Magazine. McGray launched the magazine with publisher Chas Edwards in October 2014. In 2016, the magazine won the National Magazine Award for overall excellence in print magazine photography.[15] Other finalists included National Geographic, New York, Vanity Fair, and Wall Street Journal.

McGray said: “We started a media company. We approached it like a story production company. Some of the things we’d make would be live experiences, live stories, and some of the things we’d make would be stories for you to read at home.”[16]

• Larry Sultan, photographer [7]
• Daniel Alarcón, novelist, journalist, and co-creator, Radio Ambulante
• Susan Orlean, writer for The New Yorker[7]
• Beck, musician
• Alice Walker, novelist[17]
• Jeff Bridges, actor [18]
• Michael Pollan, author [19]
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph, poet, playwright, dancer
• Alexis Madrigal, editor in chief, Fusion
• John C. Reilly, actor
• Autumn de Wilde, photographer
• Kumail Nanjiani, comedian and actor, Silicon Valley
• Starlee Kine, creator and host, Mystery Show
• Lee Unkrich, Oscar-winning filmmaker, Toy Story 3 [20]
• Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu, co-hosts, BuzzFeed's Another Round
• Alex Gibney, Oscar-winning filmmaker
• Stephanie Foo, producer, This American Life
• Jon Mooallem, journalist and author[19]
• Jenna Wortham, staff writer, The New York Times Magazine[19]
• Sam Green, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and live cinema performer
• Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times
• Jad Abumrad, founder and host, Radiolab
• Katy Grannan, photographer
• Ava DuVernay, Oscar-nominated director, Selma
• The Kitchen Sisters, radio producers
• Steven Okazaki, Oscar-winning filmmaker
• Rebecca Solnit, author
• Jon Ronson, author and radio personality
• Sasheer Zamata, cast member, Saturday Night Live
• Alec Soth, photographer
• Samin Nosrat, chef and writer.[21]