Have you ever been to Pop-Up Magazine? Me neither. But a friend in San Francisco tells me it’s all the rage down there (sells out immediately, everyone’s talking about it afterwards), and they do it in other cities too, including a Pop-Up Magazine in Seattle this coming Thursday at Town Hall.
As organizers explain it:
Pop-Up Magazine is a night of true, multimedia storytelling created especially for the stage and a live audience performed by some of our favorite writers, documentary filmmakers, radio producers, and artists. Each contributor presents a vivid, multimedia story about the world around us, accompanied by illustrations, animations, photography, sound, film, and an original score, performed onstage by musical collaborators Magik*Magik Orchestra. Story topics range from politics, food, art, sports, design, business, science, and more… Performances are one night only and are not recorded — you have to be there to experience it.
I was emailing with a Pop-Up publicist begging her to at least tantalize me with some key words about Thursday’s show, but the only keywords she would give me were phrases like:
• live magazine
• never-before-shared stories
• topics range from politics to people and sports to science
• one-night only
• ephemeral
But I’d also gotten an email from Jon Mooallem, one of my favorite New York Times Magazine writers, saying he was going to be in Thursday’s Pop-Up Magazine show. After begging and pleading, I got the publicist to send a list of “contributors for Pop-Up Magazine Seattle,” which I think means some of all of these people might be involved:
• Jon Mooallem (writer at large, The New York Times Magazine)
• Kelley L. Carter (Emmy Award–winning writer, ESPN’s The Undefeated)
• Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib (Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist, MTV News)
• Laurel Braitman (New York Times bestselling author, writer-in-residence, Stanford School of Medicine)
• Rachel Monroe (writer, Texas Monthly, The New Republic)
• Talia Herman (photographer, The California Sunday Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fader)
• Nicola Twilley & Cynthia Graber (co-hosts, Gastropod)
• Ben & Rhonda Partain (essayists)
• Jamie Meltzer (award-winning filmmaker)
• Matt Largey (news editor, KUT Austin)
• Tim Hussin (award-winning documentary filmmaker)
So, yeah, sign me up. I’m going. Tickets are still available* if you care to join.
*Update: I am now being told by organizers that the event is sold out. Good luck doing whatever you have to do to get in!
