Defne Saricetin is a writer, editor, and creative director based between London and Istanbul. She has also spent time in Paris, where she earned her MFA in Fiction from New York University. Her work has appeared in How to Be a Tastemaker, published by Gestalten, as well as in Semaine, Vogue, and other publications. Currently, she is working on her first novel and writing criticism and essays on literature, culture, art, desire, mythology, and language from her studio in Notting Hill.
She serves as a reader for the New York International Screenplay Awards, is a contributing editor at Wonderflaw, and mentors undergraduate students at the University of the Arts London, where she received her bachelor’s degree in journalism with first-class honours. She was also a keynote speaker at Voices in Publishing and served as editor for an issue of Artefact shortlisted for Stack Awards’ Student Magazine of the Year.
Defne has interviewed public figures including Boris Johnson, Emma Dabiri, Katy Hessel, Mickalene Thomas, Fergus Henderson, and many others for both print and broadcast. She has contributed features on politics, art reviews, and literary criticism to publications in Turkish and English; created the Vogue Book Club for Vogue Türkiye, a monthly curation of literary fiction in translation; consulted on How to Be a Fashion Revolutionary, a two-part documentary on the fashion industry’s impacts; and produced a series on AI and the future of creative industries for Kapital Media. Before founding her own company, she worked at British Vogue, Samsung, Newsflare, MatchesFashion, Turkcell, and Somerset Studios.
She is particularly interested in collaborations that address inequalities in the arts, education, mental health, and neurodivergence—and is always happy to discuss taste, the ancient world, and Mesopotamian mythology.
To contact Defne: def@deftin.com
For creative partnerships and speaking engagements: press@deftin.com
Sign up for Defne’s newsletter tilt: thinking in literature today and other inclinations: daphnemar.substack.com