About me
Anna Hart is a London-based journalist who regularly writes for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Grazia, GQ, Stylist, Glamour and Elle. She is currently Contributing Editor (Travel) for Stylist magazine, and writes about popular culture, social trends, travel and lifestyle for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines.
Anna received a graduate scholarship placing her as junior writer at FHM magazine in 2004, where she then worked as staff writer for two years, travelling extensively to covering subjects as varied as Hurricane Katrina and stag weekends in Riga. She went freelance in 2006 and for the next two years did maternity and holiday cover at a variety of magazines including Cosmopolitan, More, New Woman, Stylist, Fabulous magazine and Shortlist. In early 2008 she worked as Commissioning Editor at Grazia magazine, a role that involved everything from attending fashion week to investigating sweatshops and compiling the weekly Barometer ups and downs cultural trend list. In 2011 she took the role of Features Editor at Stylist magazine, commissioning, writing and editing culture, travel, news and fashion stories,.
She left in order to become a freelance writer out of her shared studio in Netil House, Hackney, and still regularly contributes to Grazia, Stylist and all the other publications she was previously full-time at, in addition to new titles such as The Telegraph, The Times, Sunday Time Travel, The Guardian, The Independent, GQ, Men's Health, Shortlist, Vogue and Elle.
Projects
- Lena Dunham's Austin, STYLIST MAGAZINESTYLIST Guest Editor Lena Dunham sends Travel Editor Anna Hart to her favourite haunts in Austin, Texas There aren’t many large cities where you can show up, alone and clueless, and be pretty much guaranteed to have a total blast from start to finish. Okay, it helps to be armed with a bespoke itinerary by Lena Dunham. But even so, I can name Austin as one of those rare metropolises where the cool stuff is densely concentrated, the living is easy and good times just to fall into place. Lena’s amazing To-Do List takes in all the stuff you really really need to do in Austin or people will laugh: Mexican food, vintage shopping, live music and an indie film theatre. But first it takes me to the Hotel Saint Cecilia, which, within minutes, is one of my favourite hotels in the world. Opened in 2008 by hip hotelier Liz Lambert, (who already owned the much-loved San Jose Hotel, a stylish revamp of an old motel) the Saint Cecilia is a singular, sultry and serene big sister, on a grand residential estate just off South Congress, a hipster focal point teeming with organic grocery stores, vintage stores, coffeeshops, taco shacks and music venues like the legendary Continental Club.
- Generation Selfie, STELLA MAGAZINEGeneration selfie: Has posing, pouting and posting turned us all into narcissists? Forget saying 'cheese'. Today, every budding Instagram star knows the benefits of the perfect pose - whether a ‘sparrow face’, ‘pigeon toe’ or ‘teapot arm’. Anna Hart asks whether we've entered the Age of Vanity “What on earth were you thinking?” I am looking at my husband’s Instagram feed, where a picture of me shivering in a wetsuit stares back at me: hair flat against my face, make-up free, bum blocking the beach. “I was thinking you looked really happy,” he says, wounded. As I try to explain why I’m reacting like a celebrity who has just spotted a paparazzo up a tree, how this photo amounts to career suicide, even defamation, I realise that his is, of course, the saner voice. But these days mine is the normal voice. Most women I know would react the same way. In the age of social media and selfies, it’s become natural meticulously to police images of ourselves. I’ve never thought of myself as high-maintenance – I go make-up-free on holidays, can get ready for a night out in under 15 minutes and never expect to look better than passable – yet I know my good angles, I’ve perfected a selfie-smile and I have preferred Instagram filters. And I’m not the only one. Vanity has exploded on an epic scale. We’re all familiar with the ways in which digital innovations have changed how we work, date, socialise and shop, but I hadn’t reckoned on my iPhone changing how I smile, how I perceive myself, and how precious I am about how others perceive me. You may dismiss me as a member of a vacuous generation, and, yes, this digital vanity might be most extreme among the under-forties, but no generation is immune. According to a 2013 study by ComScore, the over-fifty-fives now make up 20 per cent of Britons online, and they are just as likely as 35- to 44-year-olds to have a smartphone. Forty per cent of 55- to 64-year-olds in Britain are on Facebook, 18 per cent of over sixty-fives. Newly retired baby boomers are travelling the world with their iPad Airs, taking selfies at Machu Picchu, writing travel blogs, getting arty with the filters on Instagram. CONTINUES...
- Lightweight Living, STELLA MAGAZINEAre you part of the 'pay-as-you-live' generation? Books, CDs, a car. It's amazing what you don't need. One writer reveals why she said goodbye to ‘stuff’ and embraced the new 'lightweight living' One day in 2011 I stood in my flat, surrounded by stacks of shoes, books, CDs and tangles of phone chargers, and felt utterly paralysed. I was 30, I’d just got married, and my husband and I were about to spend 12 months working in New Zealand, simply to do something a bit different with our first year together. It was a gloriously free-spirited idea, but at that moment I felt the opposite of free. I couldn’t imagine escaping the flat. It wasn’t worth shipping all our things across the world for such a short time, and storage would run to the thousands – it seemed crazy to spend money not to use them. I was suffocated by my own stuff – and, until we found a solution, we couldn’t leave. The words of Tyler Durden, the nihilistic protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel Fight Club, resounded in my head: “The things you own end up owning you.” It was a pivotal moment for me, an ardent lover of nice things, a maximalist, a bargain-seeker, a sentimental hoarder of ancient gig tickets, postcards and notebooks. I realised that if I wanted the freedom to make sudden life-changing decisions such as this – to work abroad for a year, or to take a risk on a job across the country – I needed to re-evaluate my relationship with stuff. Because no retro sideboard, no matter how lovely, should get in the way of an opportunity.
- The New Ambition, Stella Magazine Cover FeatureThe new ambition: the generation redefining their careers Still trying to climb the corporate career ladder? How 20th century. For many young professionals, career 'success' now means something different Writer: Anna Hart A few years ago I hit a point in my career that nobody talks about at networking events, in mentoring sessions or on The Apprentice: gazing up the career ladder and realising that you don’t want to go there. In fact, I felt like I’d already gone a rung too far. I was 29, fiercely ambitious and a features editor at a glossy fashion magazine. A dream job, really, and a year earlier, as a staff writer on another title, I’d identified that precise role as the gilded, probably unobtainable next rung on my way to the job I always thought I wanted – a magazine editorship. Until now I believed my career path would be as direct and succinct as an author’s biography on a book jacket. My problem was I’d been promoted out of what I loved doing, which is writing. I was so busy climbing the ladder I never stopped to ask myself the most important question of all: what do you want to spend your day doing? For me, it wasn’t editing other people’s writing, or going to meetings or managing other people. You’d imagine that we would have the choice to revert to a previous role, explaining that we prefer the view from the rung below. But the only way to descend the corporate structure is via a snake – not a dignified route (involving being sacked, some sort of industry-wide disgrace or a stress-induced breakdown). CONTINUES...
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Work history
Freelance Writer
Experienced freelance writer for a range of magazines and newspapers, including Grazia, STYLIST, GQ, Elle, RED, The Times, The Observer and FHM. Specialises in pop culture, social commentary, reports and trend features.
Whilst I really enjoy the buzz of a magazine office, I’ve maintained a love of writing, and have always felt that being a freelance writer is preferable to remaining in a staff job which doesn’t challenge me. Since September 2011, I've worked from my office space in London Fields, writing social commentary pieces, cover interviews, opinion columns and travel/fashion/lifestyle features for a wide variety of magazines, including Red, Stylist, Grazia, Glamour, GQ and Shortlist.
In 2013 STYLIST offered me the role of Contributing Editor (Travel) and I now look after the magazine's Travel content on a freelance basis, still working out of my office in London Fields.
Features Editor
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Commissioning and writing features at STYLIST magazine
Having just returned from 15 months overseas, I felt it was important to immerse myself in the UK publishing scene again by taking a staff job, and so began a maternity cover stint at Stylist magazine.
STYLIST operate with a small team, and as the number three in command I was given the chance to experience a senior management position at a busy, groundbreaking weekly. I managed a team of three junior members of staff, holding weekly features meetings with them. I also attended all top editorial meetings, suggesting cover imagery, coverlines, layouts and also ideas for themed issues, campaigns and supplements. I continue to write travel reviews and features for STYLIST, and periodically cover the roles of Deputy and Associate Editor.
When I left I maintained strong relationships with the team, and regularly contribute features to the magazine. In 2013 they asked me to take on the role of a Contributing Editor at STYLIST, looking after Travel content in the magazine and overseeing our Escape Routes travel section.
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Skills
- Writing
- Journalism
- Travel
- Features
- Popular Culture
- Travel and Lifestyle
- Style Editor
- Investigative Journalism
- Social Commentary
Education
MPhil Romantic Literature
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Graded Distinction
English Literature Politics Joint MA
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First Class Honours