1. Maria Popova 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.
24 Facts About Maria Popova
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Maria Popova is the creator of "The Universe in Verse", a large-scale annual celebration of science and the natural world through poetry.
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Maria Popova was born on 28 July 1984 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
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Maria Popova graduated from the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria, a secondary school, in 2003.
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Maria Popova relocated to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a degree in communications, though for years, up to 2012, her grandmother had wanted her to get an MBA.
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Maria 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, as an intern for a local writer, as an employee for a work-study job at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and as a staff member for a small start-up advertising agency in Philadelphia.
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In 2005, while Maria Popova worked at an advertising agency, she noticed that her co-workers were circulating information within the advertising industry around the office for inspiration.
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However, Maria Popova thought creativity was better sparked with exposure to information outside of the industry one was familiar with.
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Maria Popova enrolled in a night class to learn web design, took Brain Pickings online, and let the project grow organically.
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Maria Popova describes the period of coming to the US to Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones; in this 2012 interview she states:.
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Maria 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, which they called "TEDxBG".
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Maria Popova has written for The Atlantic, Wired UK, GOOD, The Huffington Post, and NiemanLab.
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Maria Popova is author of Figuring, published by Random House in 2019.
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Maria Popova is co-editor of A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader, published by Enchanted Lion Books in 2018.
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Additionally, Maria Popova serves as the editorial director at the higher education social network Lore, run by Noodle.
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Maria Popova edits Explore, a partnership site with the Noodle educational search company.
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Maria Popova has received numerous instances of media recognition for her work.
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Maria 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.
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Maria Popova's work has been spotlighted and profiled in publications such as The New York Times.
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Maria Popova has been very vocal about her dislike for traditional advertising, and has repeatedly expressed her pride on being advertising-free:.
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In 2013, Maria 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.
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Maria Popova has since updated her donation page on Brain Pickings to acknowledge the fact that she receives income from affiliate advertisements.
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In 2012, Maria Popova created The Curator's Code, a project by Maria Popova with input from designer Kelli Anderson.
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Maria Popova has sought to maintain a degree of personal anonymity, with emphasis on her writing rather than on herself.