Cuqui Magazine Comes to Amplify: A Teen Journalism & Media Residency for Girls

There’s a woman arriving at Amplify this July with a printing press’s worth of ambition, a Joan Didion novel she’s been trying to finish for a year, and a very firm opinion about bunk beds.

Her name is Paula James-Martinez. She started her career at 19 at Dazed & Confused in London, landed the fashion editor job she’d dreamed about since she was 13, looked around at the media landscape her daughter Luna was growing up in — and decided to burn it down and build something better.

That something is Cuqui. A monthly print magazine for teen girls who are paying attention. No endless scroll. No algorithm telling you what’s wrong with you. Just photography, essays, playlists, posters, and the radical act of handing a teenage girl a microphone and asking: what is your culture?

This summer, Paula is bringing Cuqui to Amplify for a two-week live editorial residency — a working newsroom, a Documentary Wall, real journalism, real conversations, and one very special cover story we’re not quite ready to reveal yet. The girls who participate will leave camp having made something real. Something that didn’t exist before they showed up.

I sat down with Paula to find out who she is, why she’s doing this, and what she actually thinks about teenage girls. The answer to that last one might surprise you.

– Meet Paula James-Martinez and Cuqui Magazine –

For the parents who haven’t come across it yet, what is Cuqui, in your own words?

Cuqui is a print-first teen media brand for the next generation — a place to find culture, answers about who they are and what they’re feeling, and inspiration in offline form. A monthly print subscription that comes with a club card, a creative collective, podcasts, the occasional gift in the mail, and IRL meetups. We’re reimagining how culture turns itself back on for teen girls.

What would your teenage self think of what you’re building?

I think she’d think it was rad. But she wouldn’t say rad, because she grew up in the UK. I’m actually one of those weird people who fulfilled my 13-going-on-30 dream by landing a big fashion editor job in NYC at 25. So I also think this is the part of the movie where I realize where it all went wrong, bustle into the boardroom with posters under my arm and go: remember when this was good? This is me building the magazine I actually wanted at 13. You know, one that saw me, encouraged creativity, and made room for my voice.

What do you think the culture gets most wrong about teenage girls? 

That they’re vacuous, or too young to form real opinions. That they’re permanently absorbed by their phones and want nothing beyond that. Teen girls, as we all know, are complex, smart, opinionated, and they need safe spaces to express that and be heard — ways to feel like they’re contributing, to be together. Honestly, teen girls are some of the most supportive people I’ve ever met. They show up for things, they show up for each other. They’re imperfect, sure — but aren’t we all? Their voices still matter.

You’ve spent over a decade working in women’s media, film, fashion, branded content , what made you decide to build something specifically for teen girls?

Honestly, my own daughter Luna, who’s 9. I started in magazines at 19 at Dazed and Confused, and the world in that moment felt so full of possibility. When I look at the media landscape for her now, I see a void, or an endless scroll.

I want to build a place of belonging for her. Somewhere she can aspire to have an essay published, find advice from a cool girl in college when she’s in her junior year, discover a new band, experience live music in a safe space.

It’s easy to tell kids to turn off from certain things, but we also have to build the spaces where they can find what’s cool and what’s next in other ways. Otherwise it’s completely unfair. I’m also building it because I genuinely still love magazines. I love photography, finding new talent and writers, discovering what people care about. It’s exciting. It’s fun.

In a world where so much of teen culture lives on a screen, you made a deliberate choice to put something physical in girls’ hands. Why does print matter to you?

I’m not going to get into all the reasons screens are bad. We’ve been told a thousand different ways. They know, we know. Sure, that plays into it. But there’s something unique about print. About permanence.

It gives what’s inside a different kind of gravitas. Print is also communal — you can rip out pages, journal together, pin things to your wall. It takes conversation and cooperation to make. And honestly, it’s novel for a generation who grew up in a world of screens and immediacy. Something coming through the door, just for them — that they get to open, draw on, write back to us, pull out posters. There’s something exciting about that.

Is there something about being a girl right now, in 2026, that keeps you up at night? And something that genuinely gives you hope?

How lonely and anxious they are. How few places we’ve created for teens to be together just as themselves. To work out who they are and how they fit into the fabric of everything. What gives me hope is them. Every time we’ve put something out into the world for Cuqui, the response from teen girls has been immediate and generous and so much smarter than the culture gives them credit for. They want this. They’re ready. They’ve been waiting for someone to actually ask.

What magazines did you grow up obsessing over and what did they give you that you’re trying to recreate for this generation?

I was kind of a weird kid in that I loved fashion from an early age, so I’d read Vogue, but I also loved The Face, i-D, and Dazed. My first job ended up being at Dazed, and their unofficial motto, “making it up as we go along,” is something I really want to recreate.

The idea that no one really knows what they’re doing, but the most brilliant creative work often comes from just starting. Just trying. There’s no wrong (well, unless you ask some of my ex-French bosses about style). But seriously, I want Cuqui to embody that. The just-start energy. The honesty of Sassy. The way Dazed championed young talent. And heck, I just want posters again.

– What Cuqui Is Bringing to Amplify This Summer –

When you and Amplify started dreaming this up together, what was the moment you both knew it was something real, something worth building?

Cuqui and Amplify share a mission: helping girls find their unique voices and their confidence. Cuqui wants to give them space for that inside our pages, but also far beyond them. The Amplify residency is exactly that, a chance for girls to walk out of camp with real skills to express themselves, written or otherwise, that stay with them long after the summer ends. The moment we realized it was real was the moment we stopped having to explain it to each other, it just made sense.

The central question you’re bringing to camp this summer is “What is your culture?” That’s a big, beautiful, open question. Why start there?

Because no one is asking them. What is your culture? What’s exciting or important to you? The early feedback we’ve had from teen girls is that social is constantly telling them what’s wrong with them or what they should buy to be better. We want to do away with that entirely, hand the proverbial mic back and let them tell us the stories we should be sharing.

What will a girl who walks into the Cuqui newsroom at Amplify actually experience? Paint us a picture of a Tuesday afternoon in there.

Early ideas are already going up on the wall. We’re starting to see the gaps in the stories the names, the angles, the leads. Maybe someone has photographs they took that morning, and we’re looking through them and editing them into a layout. Maybe there’s an interview going down in the corner. Maybe two girls are debating about a headline. It’s a working newsroom, messy, loud, alive.

You’re bringing a real live music artist to camp to be the first-ever Cuqui cover. No spoilers, but can you give us a hint about why her?

Because she’s leading her own culture. She shows up boldly as exactly who she is, and that isn’t about asking young people to conform. It’s about asking them: why are things this way? Do they have to be? How do you want to show up?

For a parent reading this right now, why should their daughter want to be a Camp Correspondent? What does she walk away with?

She walks away knowing she can do it! That she can come together with her peers and create something end to end. Maybe she finds a new talent. Maybe she learns something new about someone else, or how to hold a camera, or that there’s an outlet for her voice she hadn’t even imagined. She also walks away with the physical manifestation of what we made together, a real reminder that with some effort and some time, we can build whatever we want.

At the end of two weeks, the girls will hold something they actually made, a real, physical artifact of their stories, their voices, their summer. What do you hope they feel in that moment?

Proud – I know I will be.

– Fast Questions With Paula –

Best magazine cover of all time? Damn I can’t pick one, but I would say many of Edward Enninful’s British Vogue covers, from championing front line NHS staff during covid, highlighting activists or simply having photographers show nature as part of a reset, so much of what he did was brave and important. 

One thing you’re packing for camp that has nothing to do with work? Joan Didion – Miami because I have been trying to read it for like a year

The Cuqui reader in three words? Smart, Unique, Curious

Finish this sentence: “I started Cuqui because no one else was going to…” be actually crazy enough to know how hard to print is and do it anyway. Because they need it. 

What’s your plan if a raccoon gets into the newsroom? Photojournalism and potential interview depending on its agent’s cooperation.

If the Cuqui newsroom had a snack situation, what are we talking? Is chocolate a cop-out? I know I’m supposed to say something healthy, but I’ve never finished a heartfelt essay at midnight without a chocolate bar.

Bunk bed — top or bottom? Top. Farts. I’m a light sleeper.

You’re at a dinner party and someone says they don’t really read anymore. What’s your face doing? I smile politely because I’m British, but I’m judging them quietly. Honestly though in today’s world, I feel bad for them. It sucks that reading a book has become a privilege.

Join the Cuqui Residency at Amplify

Girls attending Session 2 at Amplify will have the chance to participate in the live Cuqui newsroom experience as Camp Correspondents. Limited spaces are still available.

Subscribe to Cuqui at cuqui.club — $100/year, 12 issues, delivered monthly.