It’s a Thursday night, and the Herbst Theatre is buzzing with people, including a disproportionate number of 20- and 30-somethings sporting some article of vintage attire. It seems as though the entire San Francisco writing community is here. There’s the creative director of Mother Jones, a couple of Wired editors, The New Yorker writers, and folks from McSweeney’s and Salon. Up front are the speakers for tonight, including The New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach (of Packing for Mars, Stiff, Spook, and Bonk) and The Vagrants and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl author Yiyun Li (recently named one of The New Yorker’s top 20 fiction writers under 40). Later, the rebel editors of Longshot magazine walk by. The audience is breathless, as if it knows something special is about to happen, and everyone here is a lucky witness. After all, what kind of literary event sells out as quickly as an Arcade Fire concert?
Pop-Up Magazine’s Issue Four did. In 15 minutes, some 900 people bought up every ticket, fighting their way through endless busy signals and an online box office—all to sit here and watch the city’s best writers, editors, and filmmakers perform onstage. It’s a salon-style event, a stunt really. A magazine come to life. There are no cameras allowed so that it becomes something truly live, undocumented, and unrepeatable. No one knows when editor in chief Douglas McGray, an established writer at The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and NPR’s This American Life will “publish” the next one. Considering we’re in an era when magazines and newspapers fear the fast approach of Doomsday, it’s thrillingly idealistic.
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