Maria Popova

Early life Maria Popova was born in 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 dolls called martenitsas, worn beginning on the first of March where Popova describes selling them on the street as American children would sell drinks at a lemonade stand. She 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. 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." Wired UK, and NiemanLab.

In 2006, she began the blog Brain Pickings as an email sent each week to seven of her friends. On October 22, 2021, the blog's 15th anniversary, Popova renamed it The Marginalian, writing that the original name had been an "ill-fitting" choice made by "a twenty-two-year-old immigrant in whose ear the tired puns and idioms of a non-native language rang fresh and full of wonder." Krista Tippett in On Being describes it as "ow a website, Twitter feed, and weekly digest... cover[ing] a 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. Anne-Marie Slaughter describes Popova's blog as "like walking into the Museum of Modern Art and having somebody give you a customized, guided tour." and The Snail with the Right Heart: A True Story, published by Enchanted Lion Books in 2021, which is a story about science, the poetry of existence, and is "inspired by a beloved young human" in Popova's own life. She is co-editor of A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader, published by Enchanted Lion Books in 2018. Since 2017, Popova has also created and hosted The Universe in Verse, an annual charitable event at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn celebrating science through poetry, which she adapted into a 2024 illustrated book of the same title.

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 in the Science and Technology category.

Side projects and partnerships In addition to running The Marginalian (formerly known as Brain Pickings), Popova has a number of side projects. She maintains a Twitter 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 Futures of Entertainment Fellow. Additionally, Popova serves as the editorial director at the higher education social network Lore, 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 The Marginalian, she asks herself three things:

She says she aims to "share content that is meaningful. Often, it's timeless." 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. 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.

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 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 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. Under the code, the "via" symbol indicates direct discovery, where the "hat tip" symbol indicates an indirect link of discovery.

Personal life Popova has sought to maintain a degree of personal anonymity, with emphasis on her writing rather than on herself.