Elina Ansary

Editor & California Lifestyle Expert

Expertise

San Francisco Travel

California Travel

Fashion and Lifestyle Gear

Highlights

Elina Ansary (she/her) is an avid traveler and shopping enthusiast from San Francisco, CA, which gives her keen insight into fashion, footwear, and travel gear and makes her an expert San Francisco tour guide.
As a working artist, Elina knows how to live adventurously on a tight budget and hopes to share her tips with other thrifty young women.
Elina brings her visual sensibilities to her writing, blending lush descriptions with cheeky humor and personal narrative, tempering it all with no-nonsense realness.

Experience

Elina Ansary has been a working artist in New York City for over a decade, but she spent her childhood in San Francisco with a father who worked full-time as a professional writer. So, writing has been a crucial part of her life and work from the beginning. The natural spaces in San Francisco and California were an early source of inspiration and nature continues to influence her as she hikes along the gorges of Ithaca, NY. Elina has attended numerous international artist residencies thanks to her art career, including in Amsterdam, Finland, Italy, and Australia. These experiences gave her a crash course in stretching her dollars and investing in the best travel gear. Elina knows firsthand the value of packing light, wearing quality walking shoes, and knowing what to do when your suitcase breaks mid-trip. Outside of The Atlas Heart, Elina has written and illustrated two instructional booklets on crafting produced by Spark Plug Publications. Her writings have appeared in anthologies, and she’s made numerous independently-produced artist books and zines. When she isn’t writing, editing, painting, or teaching, Elina loves cooking, eating, listening to podcasts, and taking long walks in the woods.

Education

Elina earned a BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute, completed a professional apprenticeship in Scenic Painting for Theatre at The Juilliard School, and is working on her MFA in Creative Visual Art at Cornell University.

Upcoming Projects

Elina is working towards a solo exhibition at Cornell’s Tjaden Gallery in June 2024, as well as several exhibitions in 2025 as part of her Master’s degree. Afterward, she’ll hopefully continue to travel the world creating site-respondent artwork, and maybe one day, she’ll finish writing that secret novel!